Paul Brears Email & Phone Number

London, Gb

Oxford, Oxfordshire, Gb

Leading two teams with 8 direct reports to build cyber security solutions for public sector customers.Service includes an AWS hosted portal application and Windows .NET client. Worked with customers to understand deployment challenges and improve the product. This has led to us building a simpler version that will be easier to deploy and allow customers to use native DNS over HTTPS functionality within the operating systems thus reducing the ongoing commitment to produce new software for each operating system.

Abingdon, Oxon, Gb

Lead architect working across the schools sector software platforms including RM Unify, RM Integris and RM SafetyNet.

Abingdon, Oxon, Gb

Working with a team of offshore developers to create new features for our successful eSafety and security solution for schools, RM SafetyNet. Acting as solution architect to help the product manager understand customer requirements and workout the best solution with the offshore development team.Improved the efficiency of development team by rolling out and embedding Scrum as an agile transformation project.Building PoC solutions and training the offshore team on new technologies.Migrated the development toolset to Azure DevOps.Improving the security of our customers by selecting and integrating an external vendor’s ML driven domain reputation data.Adding alerting functionality so school safeguarding leads can get proactive information on pupils at risk.Helping the sales team with presales activities and writing bid responses for large opportunities.Working with an offshore 24*7 NOC to support the platform and hands on troubleshooting where needed.

Abingdon, Oxon, Gb

Responsible for security strategy and development of security policies within our ISP network ensuring ISO27001 certification is maintained. Procured and implemented new DNS & IP address management solution providing new APIs to enable network automation and automate delivery tasks.Investigated and responded to security incidents seen in our network and worked with customers and support teams to improve security.Designed and built new SSL VPN service for customers to improve their security.Managed and monitored external vendors supplying DDoS, IPS and vulnerability management services.Discovered vulnerabilities in the DDoS mitigation vendor’s portal and ensured resolution by the DDoS Appliance vendor.Negotiated re-design of solutions from the managed security providers to provide compatibility with the company network.

Abingdon, Oxon, Gb

I took over as the Architect for RM Books at a crucial stage just before the platform was made available to international customers. Replaced iOS and Android apps with new ones written by a 3rd party.Made significant ecommerce bookshop changes to support world-wide functionality.Coordinated the Agile app development across multiple sites globally (a sub-contractor in Canada and RM’s software development and test teams in India).Ensured high standards of design and implementation of APIs and encryption choices to meet publisher’s DRM requirements.

Abingdon, Oxon, Gb

RM Unify is an Azure PaaS hosted IDM application that holds personal data for over a million people and I was seconded into the software development department from the outset of the project as the expert within the company on SAML and SSO platforms.Led SSO strategy and conducted PoC for new protocols (OIDC and OAuth2) to assess relevance and design security features required.Conducted code reviews, security reviews and risk assessments; proposed scope for external web application testing. Investigated and proposed solutions to security issues and led improvements to obtain and maintain ISO 27001 accreditation.Collaborated with offshore development teams using agile methodology to build for the SSO component, designing and building functionality to do ws-* and SAML sign on into 3rd party applications. Engaged 3rd party application developers into the platform and worked with them to improve security of their applications.

Abingdon, Oxon, Gb

Responsible for strategy and standards for security, storage and backup.Designed and built security solutions for our largest application hosting and ISP customers.Technical expert within the company for Shibboleth and SAML SSO.Investigated security incidents on customers’ servers.Duties included bid response, pre sales, consultancy, design, cost models, implementation and support of complex solutions.

Abingdon, Oxon, Gb

Responsible for pre-sales support to bid meetings for BSF procurement.Implemented resilient replicated hosting solutions for customers of RM’s e-marking business

Abingdon, Oxon, Gb

Responsible for RM’s first implementations of Federated Access Management using Shibboleth for Glow Scotland.Implemented RM’s first EMC SAN and Microsoft SQL clusters.

Abingdon, Oxon, Gb

Responsible for EMC Networker backup and security products such as firewalls and IDS.

Abingdon, Oxon, Gb

Responsible for WAN installations, firewalls and server hosting.

Abingdon, Oxon, Gb

Worked on a range of projects that enable schools to manage Windows networks

Abingdon, Oxon, Gb

Responsible for choosing, project managing, testing and releasing new PC hardware components, working with suppliers to fix problems and providing 3rd line support for difficult problems.