- Hiking and camping
- Tech enthusiast with homelab to try new technologies
- Supporting STEM education initiatives and mentorship programs with local high school
- Volunteering at food-related charities
Zack Shahan
Tuscola,TX
Summary
Results-driven Vice President of Security Operations with forward-thinking approach centered on company success and competitive growth. Demonstrated record of success in building successful teams and managing profitable operations.
Overview
20
20
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Vice President of Security Operations
Funeral Directors Life
12.2018 - Current
- Implemented security programs following over 600 SCF framework controls, reducing overall cyber risk using Managed SOC, IPS systems, WAF for both on-prem and cloud, NAC to better secure on-prem networks, MDM systems to ensure secure baselines for both laptops, mobile devices and remote servers, achieving 4/5 on our annual cyber risk assessment
- Demonstrated proficient leadership skills to motivate teams to secure on-premise and cloud infrastructure baseline requirements, while maintaining 99.99% uptime overall
- Managed SaaS B2B solution for the funeral industry and optimized AWS costs with a 26% initial reduction, to achieve goal of less than 5% spend increase year over year
- Led teams to manage 600+ server and endpoint assets, with 10% growth year over year while reducing need for additional staff
- Developed Security Awareness program via KnowBe4 and achieved a less than 2% click rate across 550 users, lower than industry standard
- Provided security guidance to marketing and development teams to ensuring compliance with state regulations.
- Established performance goals and methods for achieving milestones via OKRs with a 85% success rate each quarter, year over year
- Conducted threat assessments identifying security vulnerabilities monthly, over industry standard annually, to reduce time to resolve vulnerabilities being actively exploited
- Implemented custom GPTs via ChatGPT Enterprise to vastly improve onboarding and training of IT staff
- Developed automations, some with AI, to reduce manual processes and improve efficiencies in IT and Information Security systems, reducing time to respond to incidents from 90 minutes to 3 minutes
Director of Technology Infrastructure
Funeral Directors Life
01.2012 - 11.2018
- Served as primary decision-maker for internal technology spending.
- Implemented ticketing system for IT and Development, code versioning with SVN and later migrating to GIT, and then implemented CI/CD via GitLab to accelerate development workflows
- Manage a global SaaS B2B solution in AWS to serve the funeral industry.
- Implemented configuration management systems via Puppet for all server and endpoint systems to ensure secure baseline and reduce configuration drift for remote machines
- Responsible for the overall planning, implementation, and maintenance of the company’s IT infrastructure.
- Ensured the security, stability, and scalability of the network and systems.
- Migrated organization from IBM Domino to Office 365 with zero downtime and zero data loss, also training staff on new platform.
- Moved 4TB of on-prem file storage to SharePoint Online to improve remote work capabilities and achieve higher DR resilience
- Managed, trained, and mentored department staff on IT best practices.
Infrastructure Analyst
Funeral Directors Life
03.2006 - 12.2011
- Troubleshot incidents reported by end-users to schedule system changes.
- Analyzed existing systems and databases and recommended enhancements.
- Communicated and trained business/technology requirements to team members.
- Migrated all of company physical servers to virtual machines to achieve over 500% server density.
- Provisioned technology assets for replacement and new hires.
- Managed organization’s firewall, network and server infrastructure.
- Managed on-premise VOIP system for organization.
- Managed Active Directory and IBM Domino email system.
- Developed and implemented strategic plans to improve IT infrastructure to reduce manual processes.
Education
Associate of Applied Science (AAS) - Computer Networking and Systems Administration
Texas State Technical College
Abilene, TX04-2006
Skills
- Risk Management
- Cross-functional collaboration
- Budget administration
- Entra ID/Active Directory/Microsoft 365
- DHCP/DNS/IIS
- Python/Bash/Powershell
- Git/Bitbucket/Gitlab
- Docker/Podman/Kubernetes
- ExtremeOS/Aruba
- Sophos/Watchguard
- Penetration testing
- Vulnerability scanning
- Ubuntu
Accomplishments
- Reduced overall cyber risk at company by 75%, improving our cyber insurance premiums with a reduction of $100k, allowing company to purchase additional coverage at no added cost
- Implemented security controls to successfully obtain SOC 2 certification for company SaaS B2B solution
- Improved security awareness to less than 2% click rate for over 550 employees
Certification
CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional), ISC2, 2023-11-01
Interests
Timeline
Vice President of Security Operations
Funeral Directors Life
12.2018 - Current
Director of Technology Infrastructure
Funeral Directors Life
01.2012 - 11.2018
Infrastructure Analyst
Funeral Directors Life
03.2006 - 12.2011
Associate of Applied Science (AAS) - Computer Networking and Systems Administration
Texas State Technical College