Austin John.
Information Security Specialist
Welcome to my Portfolio website! I’m a skilled IT professional, currently working in the financial services industry.
Hi, my name is
About Me
As an early career IT Professional, I’ve spent my time diving into various IT and Cyber domains. The vast experiences I’ve had has allowed me allowed me to ultimately find my passion in Network Architecture & Security.
After growing up in Central NJ, I pursued my college degree out of state. I earned my B.S. in Technology Management from the College of Engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station, where I explored an entirely different part of the United States.
During my senior year of college, I worked as an IT Project Coordinator at BNY Mellon, while pursuing specialized research at TAMU Laboratories.
Shortly after graduating, I joined BNP Paribas CIB as a consultant Project Manager, coordinating various Transversal IT projects related to Telecom/Recordkeeping/InfoSec Deployments.
As of January 2026, I have joined BNP Paribas CIB as a full-time Assistant Vice President within the CTO Office, currently working on various global initiatives for the bank.
Here are a few technologies & topics I've been working with recently:- DORA (EU) ICT Risk Management
- 23 NYCRR pt.500 14-15 (DFS)
- Cryptographic Key Management System (CKMS)
- Oracle Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)
- Network Micro-segmentation (Illumio Zero-Trust)
- ETL Processes (DAX/VBA/SQL)
- IT CapEx Budget Forecasting
- Vulnerability Scanning (Tanium/Nexpose)
Experience
Assistant Vice President managing Production Security focused initiatives
- Team: CTO Office - IT Production - Global Projects (01/26 - present)
IT Consultant - Project Manager through Exalt-Fi North America
- Team: CTO Office - IT Production Global Projects (01/25 - 12/25)
- Team: CTO Office - IT Production - Transveral IT (07/24 - 12/24)
Analyst-level position within the IT Operations team of Truso
- Team: IT Operations
Achievements & Accomplishments
- Coordinated the migration of on-prem IAM AD services to Azure Cloud-based solutions
- Developed a handbook to address common troubleshooting issues found in IT Support tickets
- Managed and configured VDI solutions for remote access, alongside GPOs with AD and EntraID to enforce security policies and automate resource allocation
Analyst-level position reporting to Infrastructure Security Directors and Project Managers
- Team: Investment Management - Pershing Core Engineering
Achievements & Accomplishments
- Developed a Power BI dashboard to monitor Core Infrastructure OS version compliance and remediation plan KPIs & trends
- Accelerated project timelines and reduced backlogs by implementing sAFE methodology & utilizing BI tools to identify bottlenecks
Core Projects
- Enterprise-wide End of Life Software Remediation iniative
- Global Registered Representative Identifier Expansion Project
During my undergraduate studies, I participated in various career-related & extracurricular activities. From a career-perspective, I’ve assisted Technology Services with campus-wide ITAM (decom HW/ rollout Cisco VoIP) projects, and took part in directed research under 2 esteemed professors.
I began my experience as a student researcher with Dr. Ali Mostafavi, researching Machine Learning implementations for Disaster Informatics Solutions at the Urban Resiliency.AI Laboratory. After which, I was granted the opportunity to pursue research in a field of my choosing: ITIL 4 Frameworks with CI/CD Pipelines
- Research Project - Developed a research paper identifying ITIL 4 applications to CI/CD pipelines, present and/or new.
- Research Project - Data mining for Dr. Ali Mostafavi and his research on Disaster Informatics Solutions, Integrating Human and Machine Intelligence for Resilient Infrastructure and Smart Emergency
- Capstone Project - College Station Campus Cisco VoIP Upgrade (80K+ Phone Lines)
Work Experience 2018
Team: Horizon Scanning Team (HST) - Intern
- Conducted various Ad-Hoc market research on eVTOL feasibility, competitor progress, and veracity of Ubers’ Elevate program
Work Experience 2017
Team: Future Aircraft Concepts Team (FACT) Intern
- Developed a strong understanding of the Engineering V-Model of Systems Development and it’s real-world applications. As an intern, I worked rotationally with Trent turbine teams to learn about the design & development process
Education
2024
Bachelor of Science in Technology Management, Minor in Business Administration
Texas A&M University - College Station, TX
Urban Resilience.AI Laboratory - Research Assistant
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Collaborated with Dr. Ali Mostafavi on the research project:
Disaster Informatics Solutions: Integrating Human and Machine Intelligence for Resilient & Smart Emergency
- Developed python scripts to query images of all residential houses in the Greater Houston Area from Google Maps APIs
- Developed an algorithm to identify optimal reference objects per image to use for distance calculations, to determine the Change in elevation Post-Hurricane Harvey
ITIL 4 Applications to CI/CD Pipelines - Student Researcher
- Collaborated with Dr. David Sweeney, ITIL Master, to conduct research on real-world applications of ITIL 4 practices to CI/CD pipelines
- Developed a CI/CD model, identifying crtical phases of the pipeline in which adherence to ITIL practices must be a requirement, ensuring secure software design & development
Extracurricular Activities
- Beta Chi Theta - PI Chapter - President
- Technology Management Honor Society
- Society of Flight Test Engineers
2019
High School Diploma
JP Stevens High School - Edison, NJExtracurricular Activities
- NJ FCCLA State VP of Finance
- 4 year varisty soccer, Captain
- RWJ University Hospital Ambassador
- Model UN Outstanding Delegate x2 @NAIMUN @WAMUNC
Research & Projects
Custom-built Appliance
IDS/IPS Rulesets
DNS
Network Segmentation
VLANs
Subnets
DHCP
Fail-over Continuity
Next-Gen Firewall (ZenArmor)
Proxy Services (Squid)
Wazuh Integration
Grafana Data Visualization
Server-side Agents
OPNsense Firewall Appliance
Repurposed a Dell Optiplex into a firewall router by adding a 4-Port NIC and deploying OPNsense. OPNsense is an opensource firewall and routing platform. I've been using this in my home office for the last 2 years, regularly maintaining rulesets and updating IDS/IPS rules to maintain security posture
Remote Access Management
Dynamic DNS (DDNS)
Virtual Private Networks
Edge Devices
Firewall Rulesets & Whitelists
Port Forwarding & NAT
Client Configurations
DNS Records
WireGuard VPN
Configured a WireGuard VPN on an OPNsense router to enable secure remote access to home network devices from anywhere, leveraging Cloudflare DDNS services for consistent endpoint resolution
Telegraf
Proxmox VE
InfluxDB
Prometheus
Real-Time Data
ETL
SQL
NoSQL
Caching
Grafana Dashboards
Grafana is an open-source analytics and visualization platform that enables users to query, visualize, and understand their data through customizable dashboards. I deployed several dashboards to teach myself ETL processes and how to manage data in transit.
K8
Proxmox VE
Docker Containers
Ubuntu Server 22.04
Ansible
Infrastructure Scaling
Kubernetes K8s
Locally deployed a Kubernetes K8 cluster using Containerd, connected to Portainer container for management via Web GUI. The purpose of this project was to teach myself how Kubernetes clusters work, the syntax, and various use cases for load balancing.
Dell PowerEdge R640
Proxmox VE
Splunk SIEM
Network Segmentation
VLANs
Subnets
IAM
Vulnerability Scanning
RHEL
Windows 2022
K8 Clusters
Load Balancing
Wargame Simulations
InfoSec Home Lab (In Progress)
Built an isolated lab environment within my home network to simulate Enterprise IT infrastructrure. Configured VLANs, Windows Server 2022, Splunk SIEM, Nessus Tennable Vulnerability Scanner, and managed several "user" VMs with Active Directory, all within a node on a Proxmox hypervisor
Get in Touch
You can reach me via email or phone, I’ll try my best to get back to you within 1-2 days!