Rahul Bannai
MELBOURNE,VIC
Summary
Security professional with 10+ years across IT and security, including SOC analyst experience at Vodafone and security roles in ANZ financial services (Equifax, CIBC, AIA). Skilled in monitoring, investigating and responding to security alerts using SIEM and EDR tools, and in leading zero-day vulnerability incidents from triage through containment and remediation with SREs, developers and external security partners. Experienced in privileged access (CyberArk) and endpoint controls, and turns complex technical data into clear, prioritised recommendations for technical and business stakeholders.
Overview
12
12
years of professional experience
Work History
Cyber Security Engineer
Equifax
Melbourne, Victoria
06.2024 - Current
- Managed external CREST-certified penetration testing vendors, including scoping, engagement and renewals.
- Supported external compliance audits (SOC 2) by providing evidence of penetration testing, vulnerability remediation and risk deviations, aligning to controls equivalent to ISO 27001.
- Partnered with the global security team to roll out the Hoxhunt phishing awareness program across ANZ, selected the pilot group, validated phishing reporting and tracking, and supported the organisation-wide rollout including phishing simulation and reporting setup.
- Led zero-day vulnerability incidents across all applications, assessed exposure and impact, worked with SREs and developers to patch, raised risk deviations where a fix couldn’t be made in time, and ran a short review after each incident to find what slowed patching down.
- Led and coordinated web application and API penetration testing and vulnerability assessments across 50+ applications, prioritising engagements by risk so testing spend went where it delivered the most value.
- Tracked vulnerability remediation (VITs) from ServiceNow and reported SLA performance and risk trends to management, application owners and global security teams.
- Wrote the RFP for a new pen testing vendor, evaluated CREST-certified providers and got CISO approval to switch. This cut the cost from $25k to $7k per test and saved around $180k a year.
- Coordinated penetration testing of AI-enabled (LLM) applications with global security teams, aligned to the OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications.
- Supported senior security architects with threat modelling and data flow diagram reviews for application transformation initiatives.
- Performed secure code reviews using Fortify and triaged SAST/DAST findings by business impact, driving remediation with development and DevOps teams within SLA.
- Ran secrets exposure clean up across all the GitHub repositories using TruffleHog, validating live credentials and removed exposed credentials therefore improving source code security posture.
- Managed HackerOne bug bounty submissions, determining severity and coordinating remediation with application owners.
- Developed application security standards, testing requirements, remediation guidance and SOPs aligned to enterprise policy, maintained in Confluence.
Information Security Engineer(IAM)
CIBC
06.2023 - 12.2023
- Provisioned and managed privileged accounts in CyberArk PAM, onboarding accounts to safes and configuring access to enforce least privilege.
- Created and administered CyberArk safes, managing safe membership and permissions in line with access control standards.
- Processed privileged access requests across Azure, Windows and Linux/Unix platforms, validating approvals and business justification before provisioning.
- Managed privileged identity lifecycle (joiner–mover–leaver), ensuring timely provisioning, modification and revocation of access.
- Configured CyberArk password rotation (CPM) policies for privileged credentials.
- Fulfilled more than 100 privileged access requests per month within SLA.
- Tracked open security deviations to expiry, following up with application owners to drive remediation or formal re-approval.
Senior Delivery Specialist
Steel and Tube Holdings Ltd.
Auckland
10.2022 - 06.2023
- Managed Microsoft 365 E3/E5 licence allocation for users, assigning, reallocating and reclaiming licences through the joiner-mover-leaver process to control licence spend and prevent over-allocation
- Tracked software and SaaS subscription renewals and licence counts, flagging upcoming renewals and unused subscriptions
- Recovered unused hardware and licences from leavers and redeployed them to new starters
- Obtained and compared supplier quotes for IT hardware and software
- Planned hardware refresh and end-of-life replacement, providing cost inputs to the IT budget
- Collaborated with Procurement, Finance and Desktop support teams to support strategic planning to improve value and reduce finance risk.
Identity and Access management Analyst
AIA NZ
06.2021 - 10.2022
- Administered end-to-end identity lifecycle for AIA users across AD, SailPoint.
- Automated joiner and leaver provisioning and deprovisioning workflows, cutting orphaned accounts and closing a recurring audit finding
- Ran quarterly user access recertification campaigns across critical applications, achieving reviewer completion and remediating inappropriate entitlements
- Identified and remediated segregation-of-duties SoD conflicts in finance/actuary systems.
- Managed and maintained IAM systems to ensure compliance with security policies, procedures, and regulations.
- Executed analysis and fulfillment for role-based and attribute-based access control, enhancing access security.
- Implemented and managed Okta solutions for SSO and MFA for various applications
- Integrating Okta with different applications like Workday, SailPoint, SNOW, and other in-house applications
- Onboarded privileged and service accounts into CyberArk enforcing credential vaulting, rotation and session recording
Incident and Problem management Analyst
Fujitsu NZ
07.2019 - 05.2021
- Quickly assessing the severity of an outage in regards to impact and technical complexity
- Ensure all the appropriate teams are working to restore and minimize downtime.
- Facilitate the resolution by effective communication across multiple teams.
- Proven skills in collaborating with tech and non tech teams
- Leading the bridge calls involving SDMs, Database, Application support, development teams in response to a high priority incident and minimizing the downtime.
- Conducting root cause analysis calls to find out the underlying cause for incidents and problems and implement preventive measures
- Worked closely Change management team to identify improvements for effective incident resolution.
- Managed the known error database and documented all the findings, work arounds for various problems
- Managed communications between leadership stakeholders and other teams involved during high incident management.
- Collaborated with cross functional teams like Service Desk, End user compute and configuration management teams to gather information and identify scope for process improvements
- Logged all tickets in ServiceNow for tracking and resolution and tracking them through to resolution
- Participating in the CAB and reviewing all the changes logged
- Mentoring the Service Desk Analysts and assisting them with escalations
- Creating PIRs for higher management and stakeholders.
- Participated in on call roster and provided after hours support
SOC Analyst
Vodafone NZ
Auckland
05.2016 - 06.2018
- Alert monitoring & triage: Monitored and triaged security alerts in Splunk across network, endpoint and identity sources, escalating confirmed threats per runbooks and SLAs
- Incident investigation: Investigated security incidents including phishing, malware, brute-force and suspicious logins, correlating logs to establish scope, root cause and impact
- EDR & containment: Used Sentinel One for Endpoint to analyse endpoint activity, isolate compromised hosts and support containment and remediation
- Incident records & reporting: Maintained accurate incident records in ServiceNow and contributed to weekly security reporting for management
- Collaboration & escalation: Worked with network, infrastructure and application teams, and external security partners, to contain threats and confirm remediation
Service Desk Analyst
Vodafone Next Generation Services
07.2014 - 05.2016
- Provided technical support for VOIP and SIP systems.
- Providing 1st and 2nd level IT support to Enterprise and Govt clients
- Always tried for First call resolution to meet KPIs and SLAs
- Escalation of unresolved incidents to Server and Application teams
- Resolving issues related to LAN/WAN, DHCP, DNS and VPN
- Troubleshooting Hardware and software issues
- Troubleshooting issues related to Linux environments
- Raised and managed P1s and P2s
- Hands on experience with Active Directory, create policies and deploy using Group Policy management.
- Supported clients with issues related to Microsoft applications like SharePoint, Exchange, FTP, Outlook, Excel, and Word.
- Helped users with issues related to VPN, RSA tokens.
- Understanding customer expectations and always strive to exceed.
- Worked closely with the desktop support team with imaging laptops and desktops.
- Assisted the server team with backups using Veeam
- Working knowledge with VM ware V centre, ESXI to resolve issues relating to virtual desktops
- Providing excellent level of service by logging incidents, tracking, and managing through to resolution
- Managing the Service Requests and assigning them within the team and made sure they are closed within SLAs.
Skills
- Identity platforms: Okta (SSO, MFA, Lifecycle Management), Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD), Active Directory, SailPoint, CyberArk PAM, Workday (HR source)
- Protocols: SAML 20, OIDC, OAuth 20, LDAP
- Governance: JML lifecycle, RBAC/ABAC, least privilege, access recertification, SoD, privileged access management
- Automation & data: UiPath, Python, REST APIs, Postman/Bruno, GitHub Actions, ServiceNow reporting, Google Sheets/Excel tracking and reporting, log analysis
- Cloud Platforms: Microsoft Azure (Azure Administrator Associate), AWS, GCP
- Networking: TCP/IP, DNS, SSL/TLS, HTTPS/SMTP
- Security tooling: SentinelOne EDR, Burp Suite, Fortify, OWASP ZAP
- Certifications: Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate
Timeline
Cyber Security Engineer
Equifax
06.2024 - Current
Information Security Engineer(IAM)
CIBC
06.2023 - 12.2023
Senior Delivery Specialist
Steel and Tube Holdings Ltd.
10.2022 - 06.2023
Identity and Access management Analyst
AIA NZ
06.2021 - 10.2022
Incident and Problem management Analyst
Fujitsu NZ
07.2019 - 05.2021
SOC Analyst
Vodafone NZ
05.2016 - 06.2018
Service Desk Analyst
Vodafone Next Generation Services
07.2014 - 05.2016