Bolton, England, United Kingdom
:: 19 years securing enterprise infrastructure through Proxy, Firewall, File Transfer, and Access Control technologies, with ambition to leverage these skills in cloud-native environments where the expertise is directly applicable. :: Professional development via self-study/home labs and securing modern certifications – Microsoft AZ-500 and SC-200, in addition to CyberArk Certified Delivery Engineer (PAM). :: Extensive experience delivering significant infrastructure Proxy and Firewall changes, from initial stakeholder engagement through to technical execution in high-profile Production environments where adherence to governance is standard. :: Strong sense of ownership and analytical skills allow for deep-dives into technical issues whilst being able to effectively articulate findings to Service Management colleagues by assisting in the writing of Risks. ** CV available from - https://stpdprdukw1.blob.core.windows.net/stblc-cv-prd-ukw-1/CV-Simon-Whittle.pdf
Separate entry only due to legal change of employer - see Atos entry for detail of present role.
This role is primarily project focussed and includes Forcepoint, Globalscape, and Squid proxy builds / upgrades; some for Financial services clients. My engagement as SME covers the end-to-end delivery of a project, including: • Providing inputs into project scoping, estimating delivery effort, and identifying risks and dependencies. • Performing an SME peer-review of a Technical Architect’s high-level design, and writing the associated low-level design. • Working with Project Manager on developing the project plan • Securing technical governance by raising appropriate change in ServiceNow, attending required change boards and Move To Production Plan meetings. • Mentoring a junior colleague throughout the project • Building and configuring proxies: ◦ Interface configuration through to policy writing ◦ Integrating into surrounding infrastructure (e.g. domain joins, SNMP traps to monitoring systems, generating CSRs). ◦ Technical snagging (e.g. packet captures) ◦ Remediating IT Health Check (ITHC) items ◦ Raising and resolving issues with product vendor • Working with Technical Architect, Service Management, and Project Management on RAID items and service acceptance documentation. • Performing cut-over activities and providing early life support Working on Globalscape EFT file transfers is both a project and BAU activity, covering Financial services and NHS accounts. In addition to previously mentioned steps, Globalscape work often involves: • Nuanced conversations to elicit key information from multiple stakeholders, such as scheduled transfer timings, pick-up/ target locations, and SFTP credentials. More recently, my work has involved the upgrade of CyberArk PAM self-hosted and Globalscape deployments.
This BAU role included an on-call element and involved managing forward/reverse proxy solutions across multiple platforms: • Blue Coat, Forcepoint, HAProxy • Microsoft Forefront TMG, Sophos UTM Key responsibilities included: • Joining incident calls to troubleshoot high-priority issues • Performing proxy policy updates and managing vendor escalations • Serving as an escalation point for junior colleagues
Completed a second secondment to the Royal Bank of Scotland, working on a firewall refresh project to replace Check Point firewalls with more recent versions. My involvement included: • Raising technical changes for approval • Replacing old firewalls with new in the data centres • Performing pre and post implementation testing This was followed by a successful secondment to The Co-operative Bank performing business-as-usual operations on Check Point firewalls. When not seconded to customer sites, worked in the Security Operations Centre performing management and troubleshooting tasks in a multi-vendor firewall environment, in addition to Blue Coat proxies and F5 load balancers. Change control activities included the analysis, planning and execution of technical changes upon network security devices, in addition to being an on-call escalation point for colleagues.
Straight out of university, this was a challenging technical role based in an IT call-centre and provided a strong foundation in managing incident tickets and customer expectations. Devices worked upon included: • Blue Coat web proxies • Check Point and Juniper firewalls • F5 Load Balancers and McAfee IPS Successfully completed a 9 month secondment to the Royal Bank of Scotland working in a BAU capacity upon Check Point firewalls.
An industrial placement with real role responsibility and task significance, where clinically led priorities demanded consistently high performance whilst implementing the VARiS MedOncology electronic health record system.