Resume

2020-07-28 890 words 5 minutes

Contents

Michael Erdely

Cybersecurity & IT Infrastructure Leader

Professional Summary

IT Leadership | Cybersecurity | System Administration | DevOps

Cybersecurity and Systems Engineer with 20+ years experience building, security, and automating systems for government, corporate, and startup organizations. Proven track record of learning and implementing new technologies quickly, effectively and securely. Recognized for team leadership, technical knowledge, and security focus.

Core Competencies

Platforms: Linux (RHEL/OEL/Ubuntu/Debian), OpenBSD, MacOS, VMware, Docker, Cloud (AWS/Azure/Oracle/Google)
Cybersecurity: SIEM, SOAR, Splunk, Cribl, Tenable, Firewalls, VPN, Zscaler, Wireguard, Crowdstrike, Risk & Vulnerability
DevOps: Observability, Grafana, Loki, Prometheus, CI/CD, GitHub, GitLab, Ansible, Python, PHP, Bash, Kubernetes
AI/LLM: Open-WebUI, Ollama, LocalAI, llama.cpp, Promptfoo, n8n, Claude, ChatGPT, Mistral, OpenCode, Pi

Work Experience

Principal Engineer

December 2019 – May 2026

Copper River Cyber Solutions - North Bethesda, MD

Principal Engineer for the FDA’s enterprise Cybersecurity Platform, a 130-server Splunk environment running on Linux, providing full-stack DevOps support, security automation, and platform engineering.

Redesigned Tenable infrastructure from a single server to a multi-tier architecture, improving redundancy, task separation, and overall platform resilience.
Deployed Cribl to replace Syslog inputs to Splunk reducing costs by lowering ingestion by 2 TB.
Protected platform systems from several Linux Local Privilege Escalations (LPE) and other vulnerabilities by testing exploit code in test environment to ensure safety of the platform.
Employed Gitea DevOps workflows to automatically build custom Docker containers for the platform.
Deployed firewalld across all 130 platform hosts, enforcing least-privilege port access between systems.
Migrated 130 systems from RHEL 7 through Oracle Enterprise Linux 7, 8, and 9.
Wrote a Bash script to automate Suricata ruleset management; downloading, testing, and distributing updates to sensors across the FDA; saving the Suricata team several hours per week.
Implemented SOAR capabilities using Splunk’s Python Add-on framework to automate SOC event response tasks.
Developed a multi-tab Splunk Dashboard consolidating SOC operational data into a single pane of glass, reducing the time analysts spend context-switching between tools.

IT Director, Infrastructure

March 2012 – October 2019

SparkPost - Columbia, MD

Managed IT Infrastructure and Security including hardware, software, budget, networking, and physical infrastructure. Managed the IT team, mentoring junior admins and developed the IT Lead into a promoted IT Manager. Coordinated with other managers to ensure IT was providing excellent customer service for the company. Partnered with Site Reliability Engineering team to ensure Corporate IT was aligned with production systems.

Directed IT staff supporting 200 office and remote users in the US, Canada, UK, Singapore, and China.
Implemented and managed services: Okta, LDAP, DNS, DHCP, OSPF, NTP, Palo Alto Firewalls, Google G Suite.
Instituted DUO Multi-Factor Authentication for Okta, 1password, OpenVPN, Slack, Google G Suite, and AWS.
Wrote Python-based Google Management script that allowed administrators to manage G Suite accounts and groups from the command line, reducing time to make changes from tens of minutes to seconds.
Wrote scripts using Perl and PHP providing admin and user interfaces managing LDAP accounts.

Principal Systems Integration Specialist/IT Team Lead

June 2010 – March 2012

CyberPoint - Baltimore, MD

Supported Corporate and customer IT systems and infrastructure supporting 100 users in three offices on two continents. Managed and mentored IT staff. The infrastructure was built on a robust VMware environment with fiber-connected SAN storage running Windows/Exchange, Linux, OpenBSD systems on a heavily Cisco-based network.

Principal Systems Engineer

May 2009 - May 2010

SPARTA/Cobham - Columbia, MD

Responsible for integrating SPARTA software and products with customer systems. Managed relationships between customers and SPARTA contracting. Expanded contracts by increasing number of development projects for customers.

IT Manager, Services

April 2007 - May 2009

RABA/SRA - Columbia, MD

Integrated RABA IT Services into SRA. Managed cleared spaces for customer work at RABA. Managed IT staff, providing mentorship to junior team members. Passed customer accreditation and audits of cleared spaces.

IT Manager

September 2003 - April 2007

Epok, Inc - Bethesda, MD

Managed IT systems for growing software company. Provided training for IT staff to grow careers. Implemented IT best practices to environment to ensure security and reliability leveraging Open Source technologies with Linux and OpenBSD.

Signature Contributions

Designed and deployed an AI Platform providing an agentic interface to Splunk data, bringing modern AI-assisted analysis capabilities to the FDA’s Cybersecurity program.
Maintained 100% uptime across a 130-server FDA Splunk platform, with multiple index and search head clusters, through monthly patch and upgrade cycles – zero unplanned downtime over six+ years.
Designed and deployed FDA Splunk VPN Automation to instantly disconnect and disable users connecting from prohibited locations, saving SOC analysts critical response time. Recognized with the FDA CISO Challenge Coin.
Implemented IT automation using Ansible, reducing week-long administrative tasks to under an hour while ensuring consistency and repeatability across 130 FDA Cybersecurity Platform systems.
Migrated an on-premises data center entirely to AWS, eliminating monthly power/HVAC-related outages and converting dozens of SparkPost’s physical and virtual systems to EC2 instances.
Launched Okta SSO with an open-source LDAP backend, cutting on-boarding and off-boarding time from 2 hours to 30 minutes and reducing the number of passwords SparkPost employees managed by 80%.
Led IT and Security evidence collection for SOC2 and Capital One audits, contributing directly to successful outcomes for both assessments for SparkPost.