Ben Abrams Email & Phone Number

Independent Consulting.I have over a decade of experience helping hundreds of clients with systems engineering in the following areas: Linux, Windows (not recently), Automation, System Architecture, Networking, Security, Digital Forensics, Backup, Data Recovery, System Deployments, Remote Support, etc.These days, I primarily focus on helping a limited number of clients with their cyber security strategies, implementation, Incident Response, Digital Forensics, and reviewing architecture.

San Francisco, Ca, Us

- Established and led a 7-member Security team, enhancing cross-functional collaboration and appointing pod leaders.- Spearheaded IT team creation, integrating security protocols, reducing team workload by 50% in the first year.- Aligned product development with security needs, boosting customer trust and retention by 25%.- Mentored and promoted 10+ engineers, fostering a culture of growth and development.- Pioneered Staff+ track for DevOps Engineers, mentoring 6+ colleagues for well-deserved promotions.- Led vendor design partnerships, improving customer outcomes and reducing complaints by 50%.- Negotiated multiple six and seven-figure contracts, saving six figures annually.- Implemented security initiatives, reducing vulnerabilities and establishing a dedicated security team.- Developed a comprehensive Security Incident Response protocol, improving response consistency and speed.- Led the development of a state-of-the-art security suite, enhancing incident response and thwarting breaches.- Guided Infrastructure and Applications strategically, optimizing project timelines and resource allocation.- Created 100+ modules, enabling 40+ teams to work faster with enhanced security.- Automated access provisioning for 30+ AWS accounts, 300+ GitHub developers, and 2000+ servers.- Designed multi-layer WAF, CDN, and DDoS solutions, protecting against intrusions and DoS attacks.- Revolutionized secure access for 1000+ employees, reducing security incidents and boosting productivity.- Collaborated on Intrusion Detection Systems, enhancing breach identification and security awareness.- Established and refined internal vulnerability management programs, enabling self-service for engineering teams.- Revitalized a Responsible Disclosure Process, achieving top 20% responsiveness and resolution metrics.- Engineered systems and applications for high availability, efficiency, and security, improving performance and reducing defects.

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Architecture: Design systems and applications from the ground up as well adjust existing application architecture to support highly available, performant, and secure solutions.Deployment: Leveraged Chef, Ansible, Terraform, Docker, Ruby, Python, Bash, K8s, etc. to accomplish deployment of servers and services using CI and CD pipelines using Jenkins, Circle CI, GitHub Actions, Atlantis, etc. to ensure that testing stability, performance, security, and other quality metrics are met before proceeding to production. Create automation to enhance user lifecycle management.Tool Smithing: Design and implementing tools/utilities for infrastructure, web, and QA teams to automate processes.Server Administration: Respond and resolve incidents, provide root cause analysis, and adjust: recipes, scripts, roles, templates, etc to reflect any necessary changes. Servers include: Nginx, Elasticsearch, Redis, Mysql + Postgres, ALB, Ruby app servers, Sensu, etc.Leadership: built the security team from the ground up, mentoring engineers, "technical therapy", etcSecurity: while a member of the "devops" team led initiatives around better testing, security posture, and advocated the creation of a security team. Leads the security team and focuses on customer (internal and external) safety, internal enablement, and building & maintaining trust with both sets of users.- Incident Response- Creating security observability- Providing best practices for Infrastructure and Applications- Creating modules to enable teams to move faster and more secure- Access Management through automationProtection / Prevention- Web: employ multi layer WAF, CDN, DDoS solutions, etc. to protect our highly sensitive applications from intrusion, DoS, etc.- Network: Network Peering, NACL, Security Groups, Intrusion Detection, etc.- Vulnerability Management- Provide tools to allow teams to understand and self manage their own infrastructure and applications- Maintain our systems

Houston, Texas, Us

HPE acquired Cloud Cruiser.Architecture: Orchestrated the standardization of HPE technology across existing solutions, yielding a 25% reduction in maintenance costs.Deployment: Leveraged Chef, Terraform, Jenkins, Vagrant, Docker, Ruby, and Bash to accomplish deployment of servers and services using CI and CD to work as auto-scaling, highly available, and ephemeral solutions. Develop while writing automated tests to ensure code quality and ensure that regressions are caught before making their way to pre-production environments.Tool Smithing: Design and implementing tools/utilities for infrastructure, dev, and QA teams to automate processes.Server Administration: Respond and resolve incidents, provide root cause analysis, and adjust recipes, scripts, roles, templates, etc., to reflect necessary changes. Servers include Nginx, Elasticsearch, Dynamodb, RDS (MySQL), ELB, SQS, Java app servers, Sensu, etc.Leadership: Guided the business unit through acquisition-related technical and cultural changes. Trained two external teams on technology and processes to provide support and partnered with business and technical leaders to ensure the delivery of the best customer experience.Security: Partnered with internal HPE security teams to achieve 100% internal compliance; reported and resolved security incidents, mitigated risks, and strengthened overall security.

Houston, Texas, Us

Leadership:- Led a new team of 5 engineers from scratch, including developers and operators, with a single focus: application delivery. Coordinated closely with business partners to elicit comprehensive requirements and establish realistic project timelines; a 25% reduction in delays.- Mentored 7+ engineers, providing hands-on guidance and support, increasing productivity; fostered strong partnerships with other engineering groups, ensuring seamless collaboration and cohesive workflows, ultimately driving successful project outcomes.Security: Led the collaboration efforts with the development to implement security best practices to ensure that we can deliver safe solutions to our customers.Architecture: Led the design and implementation of highly available and scalable solutions. Deployment: Leveraged Chef, Terraform, Jenkins, Vagrant, Docker, Ruby, and Bash to accomplish deployment of servers and services using CI and CD to work as auto scaling, highly available, and ephemeral solutions. Develop while writing automated tests to ensure code quality and ensuring that regressions are caught before making their way to pre-production environments.Tool Smithing: Design and implementing tools for infrastructure, dev, and QA teams to automate processes.Server Administration: Respond and resolve incidents, provide root cause analysis, and adjust: recipes, scripts, roles, templates, etc. to reflect any necessary changes. Servers include: Nginx, Elasticsearch, DynamoDB, RDS (MySQL), ELB, SQS, Java app servers, Sensu, etc.

Houston, Texas, Us

Leadership:- Built a new team of 5 engineers from scratch, including developers and operators, with a single focus: application delivery. Coordinated closely with business partners to elicit comprehensive requirements and establish realistic project timelines, resulting in a 25% reduction in delays.- Mentored 7+ engineers, providing hands-on guidance and support, increasing productivity; fostered strong partnerships with other engineering groups, ensuring seamless collaboration and cohesive workflows, ultimately driving successful project outcomes.Security: Collaborated with development teams to ensure security is being put in at all layers to ensure we can deliver safe solutions to our customers.Architecture: Design from the ground up and implement highly available and scalable solutions. Collaborated with developers to understand code, provide suggestions to optimize code, and design for a production environment.Deployment: Leveraged Chef, Terraform, Jenkins, Vagrant, Docker, Ruby, and Bash to accomplish deployment of servers and services using CI and CD to function as auto-scaling, highly available, and ephemeral solutions. Develop while writing automated tests to ensure code quality and ensure that regressions are caught before making their way to pre-production environments.Server Administration: Respond and resolve incidents, provide root cause analysis, and adjust recipes, scripts, roles, templates, etc., to reflect necessary changes. Servers include Nginx, Elasticsearch, DynamoDB, RDS (MySQL), ELB, SQS, Java app servers, Sensu, etc.Tool Smithing: Design and implement tools for infrastructure, dev, and QA teams to automate processes.

Architecture: Design and implement highly available and scalable solutions. Collaborated with developers to understand code, provide suggestions to optimize code, and design for a production environment.Deployment: Implemented deployment of servers and services to work as auto-scaling, highly available, and ephemeral solutions with Chef, Docker, CoreOS, Terraform, Capistrano, Thor, Vagrant, Ruby, and Bash. Develop and test solutions in multiple environments to ensure testing is done and issues can be found before making their way into production.Tool Smithing: Design and implement tools infrastructure and dev teams use to automate processes.Server Administration: Respond and resolve incidents, provide root cause analysis, and adjust recipes, scripts, roles, templates, etc., to reflect necessary changes. Servers include Nginx, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, Redis, RabbitMQ, MySQL + Postgres, HAProxy + ELB, Ruby app servers, Sensu, etc.Security: Partnered with development to ensure security is being put in at all layers to ensure we can deliver safe solutions to our customers, and led forensic analysis on suspected breaches and determined risk, scope, and action plan for remediation.

Architecture: Designed and implemented highly available and scalable solutions. Collaborated with developers to understand code, supplied suggestions to optimize code, and designed for a production environment.Deployment: Implemented deployment of hundreds of servers and services to work as auto-scaling, highly available, and ephemeral solutions with Chef, Docker, CoreOS, Capistrano, Vagrant, Ruby, and Bash. Develop and test solutions in multiple environments to ensure testing is done and issues can be found before making their way into production.Tool Smithing: Designed and implemented utilities for infrastructure, web, QA, and product teams to automate processes.Server Administration: Responded and resolved incidents, delivered root cause analysis, and adjusted recipes, scripts, roles, etc., to reflect necessary changes. Services include Nginx, Apache, Elasticsearch, MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB, ELB + HAproxy, Rails, Sinatra, Nagios, and Sensu.Security: Partnered with development to ensure security is being put in at all stack layers to ensure we can deliver safe solutions to our customers, led forensic analysis on suspected breaches, and determined risk, scope, and action plans for remediation.

Las Vegas, Nv, Us

Architecture: Design and implement highly available and scalable solutions for Nationaland International deployments. Collaborated with developers to understand code and provide suggestionsto optimize code/design for a production environment.Deployment: Automating servers as auto-scaling, highly available, and ephemeral solutions with RightScale Templates, bash, chef, and fabric (python). Develop solutions in local environments using Vagrant, pushing to Dev RightScale environments, and staging and production to ensure testing is done at each level and issues can be found before making their way into production.Server Administration: Respond to and resolve incidents, provide root cause analysis, and adjustscripts and templates to reflect necessary changes. Servers include DNS, Apache,Couchbase, Hadoop/Hive/Sqoop, MYSQL, Load Balancers, Monit, etc.Security: Developed Incident Response Policy and Procedures. Develop solutions that complywith 100+ regulation bodies, including International, National, State/Province, City, and Nevada Gaming Regulation Agencies.

Edmonton, Ab, Ca

Maintain Networks: Switching, Routing and Firewalls, DHCP, and managing IP allocation.Maintain Servers: 400+ with the following functions: DHCP, DNS, Web, MySQL, MSSQL, Email, VOIP, VPN, BES, Terminal Servers, File, application, and Active Directory.Deployment: Setting up virtual servers (Windows, Linux) with use of various hypervisors (Hyper-V, VmWare, Xen), coordinate with field technicians and ISP for onsite repairs. Setup and maintain 2000+ Laptops, Desktop, and tablets remotely.Security: Anti-virus, malware removal, and maintain firewalls.

Las Vegas, Nv, Us

Maintain Networks: Cabling, Switching, Routing and Firewalls, TCP/IP, DHCP, and managing IP allocation. Server Administration: Maintain 40+ internal in addition to client SAAS solutions running on diverse environments such as AWS, CloudSigma, Dreamhost, and Tonaquint Data Center - servers include: DHCP, DNS, PXE, Apache, Proxy, MySQL, MongoDB, Git, Email, VOIP, VPN, Syslog, backup, XCP (Open Source Xen Server) and LDAP.Backup Administration: Backedup all critical data, configuration, developers code and databases with onsite and offsite solutions such as rsnapshot and spideroak. Collaboration: Coordinated with Lead Developer and development team to understand the requirements of new application environments and ensure proper configuration to account for: security, reliability, availability, scalability and compliance. Setting IT standards: Set standards on network organization, server setups, and security policies.Deployment: Setting up both physical and virtual servers using XCP (Open Source Xen Server), Debian, Ubuntu, and CentOS using custom written scripts and git.Security: Set, follow, and enforce security standards; set password requirements, access restrictions, vulnerability assessments, OS/security patching, and maintain firewall.Vulnerability Assessment: Daily log review, review vendor vulnerability announcements and evaluate need to patch, monthly vulnerability and penetration testing.Network Admin: for Dixie Incubator.

St. George, Utah, Us

Maintain Networks: Switching, Routing, TCP/IP, and cabling.Maintain Servers: Setup, configure, and maintain both Windows and Linux Servers with the following functions: DHCP, DNS, AD, Web, File, Application, Terminal Servers, and Imaging solutions (Altiris and FOG).Maintain Workstations: Maintained 2000+ Student, teacher, and labs spanning across 5 school sites: ensure all systems were up to date with necessary OS patches, Anti Virus, and third party updates.Deployment: Creating and deploying images to single machines or to labs of 60+

St George, Utah, Us

Environmental and Power: Monitor heating, cooling, and power systems to ensure uptime and overall health of the Data Center.Monitoring internal network and services: Monitor and troubleshoot thousands of network and DC hosted solutions; including networking, storage, and compute resources.Security: Ensured only permitted personnel gain physical or remote hands access. Customer Support: Answer client's calls and perform remote hands assistance as needed.