Elmira Hilaj

• Developed and executed 3-year cybersecurity roadmap that secured Bank infrastructure and transformed organizational security posture.

• Established 24/7 SOC operations from scratch, cutting incident response times.

• Part of the security architecture team for e-para digital wallet launch, enabling e-para's entry into fintech market with zero security incidents in first year.

• Partnered directly with Mandiant consultants to rebuild incident response capabilities, resulting in 90% improvement in threat containment.

• Deployed enterprise-wide Akamai WAF protection that blocked 15,000+ malicious attacks monthly while maintaining 99.9% uptime.

• Conducted quarterly risk assessments that identified critical vulnerabilities and integrated vulnerability management workflow.

• Created custom Splunk dashboards that automated 80% of security monitoring tasks, freeing team to focus on advanced threat hunting.

• Provided quarterly security briefings to executive leadership, driving informed decision-making by presenting key performance indicators (KPIs), project status updates, and security assessment results and evidences.

• Executed Information Security Risk Assessments (ISRA) and led Business Continuity Management (BCM) and Disaster Recovery (DR) simulations.

• Taught Cisco courses on routing and switching, gave hands-on lab tests, provided feedback on configurations. Explained VLAN setups, mentored students on exam questions, and troubleshooted their lab errors daily.

• Architected secure unified communications networks with integrated security controls, implemented VPN solutions, and conducted security assessments for SIP trunking infrastructure.
• Deployed end-to-end secure UC solutions with encrypted communications, conducted security testing for codec compatibility, and maintained comprehensive security documentation.

• Secured national telecommunications infrastructure serving more than 1M customers with zero major security breaches during tenure

• Designed network security architecture with redundancy and failover capabilities, security-focused disaster recovery testing, and maintained security documentation.

• Led 3-person IT support team.
• Configured customer premises equipment, diagnosed network connectivity failures, conducted technical troubleshooting, and documented service delivery metrics.

• Configured and deployed network infrastructure for enterprise clients, optimized routing protocols, and implemented network segmentation strategies.
• Administered network communication systems, configured routing equipment, managed enterprise network deployments, and performed network performance optimization.