AT&T Global Network Services · Senior Systems Engineer · 2012 – 2015
Hardening a VMware private cloud and cutting breach-response time by 60%
- -85%critical exposure
- -60%MTTR in breach response
- 2hRTO / RPO, validated in HA tests
Context
As Senior Systems Engineer at AT&T Global Network Services in Bratislava, I managed a VMware private cloud for a global network operator, where security operations and availability were measured continuously.
Challenge
Reduce the platform's exposure, respond to incidents faster and with better evidence, and make recovery objectives demonstrable — while raising the operating discipline of the wider team.
Approach
- Hardening. Enforced OS and virtualisation hardening across the private cloud to shrink the attack surface.
- Detection and vulnerability management. Rolled out IDS/IPS and ran recurring vulnerability scans to find and remove critical exposure.
- Breach response. Led incident response, forensics and log correlation so that root causes were identified quickly and reliably.
- Resilience. Developed DR strategies meeting 2-hour RTO/RPO and validated them in high-availability tests.
- Operating discipline. Mentored junior engineers on secure operations and introduced SOPs and training to control configuration drift.
Outcomes
- Attack surface reduced by 40% through hardening.
- Critical exposure reduced by 85% via IDS/IPS and vulnerability scanning.
- Mean time to recovery cut by 60%; configuration drift cut by 50%.
- 2h RTO/RPO DR strategies validated in high-availability tests.