Preston Belknap (He/Him)

Experience

• 

  ITT Technical Institute

  Jul 2007 - Dec 2007

  Assistant Systems Support Technician

  Offered technical hardware, software, and network support for ITT systems and Windows XP Professional software images.Performed grandfather, father, son tape backups and prepared documentation to maintain application and curriculum software. Assisted ITT students and employees with systems troubleshooting support by simulating or recreating problems as requested by the user to resolve operating difficulties in day to day running of the school. Responsibilities included maintenance and optimization of school systems and network images. Increased login speed of student mandatory default user profile 50% by removing unused programs, shutting down unused and/or insecure services, and tweaking system performance settings for optimal efficiency. This greatly reduced network traffic enhancing the overall efficiency of the network during peak hours. Show less

• 

  Best Buy

  Dec 2007 - Dec 2008

  Information Security Analyst

  Provided vulnerability scanning services using the Qualys Guard tool daily as a part of the Security Operations Center (SOC) team to ensure proactive security in the form of vulnerability scanning, risk research, and remediation. Established close contact with device owners in charge of servers and network devices to maintain best security practices and patching efforts as per security guidelines created by Best Buy Co., Inc in compliance with PCI-DSS. Resolved and mitigated the latest zero day and/or recently discovered vulnerabilities through collaboration with relevant server and network teams.Assisted with operation of the Arcsight Intrusion Detection System using Smart Connectors and Flex Connectors via the Arcsight Console to provide real time event monitoring and security incident response in a small team environment. Created basic rule and filter sets to trigger aggregation and correlation of network activity, allowing similar events to be grouped and connections between them to be drawn. Team efforts were made to quickly escalate and resolve suspicious events as they became known. Show less

• 

  UnitedHealth Group

  Feb 2009 - now

  Co-lead of a team of Information Security professionals distributed across the USA. Focuses on enhancing organizational security posture through vulnerability management and technical debt reduction programs utilizing a top-down approach with the support of Sr. Leadership and Security Champions. Oversees product lifecycle management, patch management, and continual service improvement. This is achieved though the ongoing assessment of our technical environment to determine where the most risk can be reduced or prevented through the implementation of new technologies, building upon existing procedures, and through the promotion of security best practices across Optum and UnitedHealth Group.Combines technical knowledge with leadership capabilities to coordinate activities between Sr. Leadership and operational teams to share direction, analyze technical requirements, and move projects forward using the Agile process.Exhibits expertise across a wide variety of technical skills daily ranging from access management to audit and compliance, server, and cloud operations management. Knowledgeable of modern development methodologies and able to interact with a wide variety of leadership, development, and IT operations teams successfully. Show less Cross-organizational move and promotion to Enterprise Information Security Cyber Defense Operations Advisory Services department. Collaborates with a team of engineers and has successfully implemented a container security scanning solution using Git, Docker, Jenkins, Kubernetes, and OpenShift in less than six months to improve the posture of organizational pipelines. Assumes product SME (Subject Matter Expert) role and develops supporting documentation for this solution including design and security implementation patterns allowing consistency of use and to ensure container security best practices are followed. Hosts boot camps and presentations to train additional organizational teams in the security process.Evaluates and integrates various tools within the CI/CD pipeline environment. Provides assessment services on the validity of tools and their scaling capabilities for Sr. Leadership. Configures tools with the intent of continuous automated scanning with minimal overhead and maintenance.Promotes agile practices in daily operations and assists teams interested in using enterprise agile tools with implementation steps to manage their product lines, features, and user stories. Created automated status reporting for executive leadership to help track project completion metrics.Operated in the Product Owner agile role for a development team creating an internal application security test management tool. Trained other Product Owners within the organization. Implemented agile development practices resulting in an increase in development team productivity by fifty percent.Spearheaded tool research, integration, and operational process development for a cutting-edge interactive application security testing solution to further facilitate reduction of the organizational attack surface. Studied and promoted various automation methods available to improve the user experience of this solution and to integrate it with CI/CD pipelines to support DevOps. Show less Promoted internally to the position of Audit Support Operations Team Lead with four direct reports. Manages and supports the access entitlement process used to review user access to over one thousand UHG applications and platforms across the organization ensuring compliance with HIPAA, SOX, PCI-DSS, and SOC2 audit controls. Winner of the Make IT Happen award granted to one-hundred and fifty employees out of a pool of fifteen thousand for work in this space.Enabled employees to perform their best by providing clearly defined job roles and expectations creating a solid career path within the department. Provided training, tools, and guidance to employees on a routine basis to help them succeed. Established agile processes to achieve departmental goals.Facilitated a ninety-two percent improvement in centrally managed application access controls compliance by supporting team members to achieve strong results. Key stakeholder in the authoring and implementation of the data validation process used to successfully provide proof-of-completeness to external audit firms for enterprise platform access reviews in 2017 creating a net savings of one-hundred and ninety-thousand dollars for the company.Provided direction and established requirements for future-state planning of the organizational identity and access management system to proactively meet annual audit goals.Wrote, reviewed, and kept up to date SQL queries and scripts used to retrieve data from back end systems for audit and support teams within the organization. Maintained team documentation and process guides. Show less Audit Support Operations team SME for the ERMS (Entitlement Review Management System) tool used internally to review user access to over one-thousand UHG applications and platforms ensuring compliance with HIPAA, SOX, PCI-DSS, and SOC2 audit controls.Wrote, reviewed, and kept up to date SQL queries and scripts used to retrieve data from back end systems for audit and support teams within the organization. Maintained team SharePoint and data repositories including audit documentation and process guides.Performed gap analysis and risk assessments pertaining to application access controls. Provided technical breakdown of any potential gaps in security for management creating a proactive rather than reactive strategy in addressing concerns.Oversaw and performed validation testing of software releases related to the provisioning system and ensured all stakeholders remained informed of results. Coordinated group brainstorming sessions to enhance the functionality of the enterprise access provisioning system with each release. Provided access control audit and analysis services for incident response teams on an as-needed basis. Show less

  • Sr. Mgr Info Security & Principal Engineer, TLCP

    Feb 2021 - now

  • Sr. IT Security Engineer

    Feb 2018 - Jan 2021

  • Sr. IT Security Consultant

    Sept 2014 - Feb 2018

  • IT Security Consultant

    Feb 2009 - Aug 2014