Pramod Reddy

IP Ops professional should have expertize in relevant skill. Logging and corelation is essential for diagnosis of problem. Tools will generate rule based alerts when an anamoly is observed. AI & ML based tools are one step ahead, observe the behavior and identify the outliers and alert immediately. These days, remediation process also can be automated. After remediating the issue, record the learnings and ensure it is not repeated.

Proper Work breakdown structure will give an insight of cost, scope and time lines. Deconstruction of project task into small deliverable packages will help achieving the goal in a faster way. These decomposed deliverables can be tracked through scrum meetings and ensure the task is accomplished. By adopting agile methodoligy procrastination can be avoided.

In order to assess the effectiveness of VAPT, look at the number of repeated vulnerabilities. If same critical vulnerabilities are getting reported in repeated assessments, then the effectiveness is very low or zero. Strategy has to be revisited in such case.

Remediation teams are different from security analyst. It will be a dedicated effort to communicate with remediation teams. Security analyst also has to work with business teams to take downtime, where ever needed. Overall, continuous follow up would be required to fix the vulnerabilities.

Impact of large Scale Cyber Security incident is multifold. Business and Operations will come to a standstill. To recover from this situation, IR team will have to collaborate with business, IT operations and Application development team to restore the systems back to normalcy. Will have to create a war room. Recovery of Major incidents will take time. Critical systems have to be restored in phase one and the rest of the systems in subsequent phases. In order to build resilient systems, IR team has to simulate the breaches. Red and Blue teaming exercise will help the company to combat the attacks and preempt those. IR team should take the advantage of evolving technologies that use Artificial intelligence.

Strong fundamentals in OS, Network, Databases and Security will help a person to excel in IT Ops. Learning is a continuous process and should be able to acquire new skills like Cloud ops etc. Should be able to resolve the problems accurately and quickly. Excellent communication skills are necessary. Visualization skills like creating dashboards and metrics is critical to the job. One who is able to present this data effectively will make him/her stand out of the crowd. One who can see a big picture, can climb the ladder fast and attain higher positions.