Reviving a 15-Year-Old Toshiba Laptop for SOC & Cloud Labs

Introduction

This Toshiba Satellite L500-13W was abandoned with Windows 7 and a failing Kali Linux install. Overheating, keyboard misconfiguration, and disk errors made it unsuitable for learning. By stabilising the hardware and installing MX Linux, I turned it into a reliable, quiet lab device — ideal for practising structured SOC methodology and preparing for AWS Cloud SOC labs.

Hardware Stabilisation & OS Choice

Key upgrades included cleaning the fan, reapplying thermal paste, and replacing the HDD with a 240 GB SSD. MX Linux 23 was selected for stability on legacy hardware, low memory usage, and compatibility with security tooling. These decisions ensured reproducibility — a critical habit in both SOC investigations and cloud monitoring.

Tooling & Hands-On Workflow

Installed tooling reflects real-world SOC workflows and is directly transferable to cloud lab practice:

Network & system analysis: nmap, wireshark, lynis
Vulnerability & host security: openvas, fail2ban, ufw
Automation & development: Python, Git, VS Code, Geany

Lab tasks included structured alert triage, scanning, packet inspection, and log analysis — all of which are methodologies directly applicable to AWS CloudTrail and GuardDuty investigations.

Lessons for Cloud SOC Progression

This lab reinforced habits critical for professional environments: assessing constraints, stabilising systems, validating assumptions, and documenting reproducible workflows.

I also understood that for my next laptop, to run multiple VMs for AWS SOC labs, I need:

CPU: Intel Core i5 or i7 for sufficient processing power
RAM: 32 GB minimum to comfortably host several virtual machines simultaneously
Storage: 500 GB SSD or larger (preferably NVMe) to handle VM disk images, OS installations, and snapshots efficiently — ideally 1 TB for multiple labs and future growth

These specifications will ensure smooth, stable, and scalable lab environments, allowing me to progress from IAM → Detection → Identity-Centric labs without hardware bottlenecks.

Next Steps

Publishing repeatable SOC and AWS lab environments for lightweight hardware
Building automation scripts for log collection and alert simulation
Documenting lessons for portfolio, blog, and GitHub to demonstrate practical, cloud-ready SOC skills