Backup Experts in Stuttgart

• Situation: Increasing demand for privacy-compliant AI solutions for clients in the KRITIS and mid-market sector that need to analyze sensitive media content (audio, video, documents) without sending data to public cloud LLMs.

• Task: Design, deployment, and secure operation of a fully self-hosted AI infrastructure including a custom-built digital management platform for automated media analysis.

• Action: Architected and implemented a multi-tier platform on hardened Proxmox infrastructure with frontend (Nuxt 3, Vue 3, TypeScript, Tailwind 4), backend (Laravel 13, PHP 8.4, Sanctum), data storage (PostgreSQL 16, MongoDB 7), caching/queuing (Redis 7, Laravel Queue), AI workers (Python 3.11, Whisper, DeepFace, Librosa), scheduling (Laravel Scheduler/Cron), and local LLMs (Gemma, DeepSeek, Qwen, Mistral, LLaMA, Phi) via OpenWebUI with segmented network access, API hardening, and audit logging following BSI recommendations.

• Result: Fully GDPR-compliant, on-premises AI platform with zero data leakage to third parties.

• Task: Overall responsibility as an external Head of Cyber Security / CISO-as-a-Service for the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of ISMS according to ISO 27001, BSI IT-Grundschutz, and NIS2.

• Action: Built and managed Cyber Defense Centers (CDC) with SOC operations, integrated SIEM solutions (Splunk, Graylog), established risk-based vulnerability management (Qualys, Nessus, OpenVAS), and conducted regular infrastructure, application, and physical penetration tests.

• Result: Audit-ready ISMS for multiple clients and a 60% reduction in critical vulnerabilities within 90 days.

• Task: Design and execution of NIS2 assessments and operational roll-out plans for KRITIS operators.

• Action: Developed an online assessment tool for automated identification of individual weakness profiles, implemented ISMS optimizations, penetration testing, awareness programs, GRC suite deployment, and delivered C-level presentations.

• Result: Accelerated the consulting process by 50% and successfully prepared multiple clients for NIS2 compliance.

• Task: Incident commander for crisis response, forensics, and business recovery in ransomware attacks and APT campaigns.

• Action: Coordinated with state and federal police (LKA, BKA), performed forensic analysis (OSForensics, Wireshark, Kali Linux), executed disaster recovery and BCM strategies, and developed BTC extortion response strategies.

• Result: 100% recovery rate within defined RTO windows and sustainable post-incident security architectures.

• Action: Planned, built, and operated a hardened multi-VM infrastructure (Proxmox, 15+ VMs) with web and mail servers, Graylog, OPNsense firewalls, CRM/ERP and LLM instances, network segmentation, DDoS mitigation, automated patch management, and backup strategies.

• Result: >99.5% uptime over 20+ years and zero compromises.

• Action: Designed coordinated phishing campaigns with five levels of difficulty, developed e-trainings and webinars in a PDCA cycle, and led red and blue teams.

• Result: Phishing click rate reduced from 35% to under 5% within three campaign cycles.

• Investigating the PoC and replacing and refining an existing cloud and IoT power plant control solution for certificate management of renewable energy plants (solar, wind, biomass, etc.) for the largest European renewable energy network operator, including examining the field IoT devices and their integration and network connections, aiming for automated PKI key management.
• Messaging with Kubernetes for large API-connected enterprise applications
• Risk and attack vector analysis, software quality & bug assessments
• Agile workload scheduling via Jira & Confluence
• Evaluation of pub/sub message streams for MQ and Kafka.
• Various tests with “best design approaches” for resilience patterns like circuit breaker designs, throughput measurement and monitoring, bulkhead governors – for robust EA design
• Integration of API management with IBM's API Connect to Kubernetes for platform-agnostic microservices API management designs. Google Apigee
• Solution health check approaches for load burst situations + remedy
• Research and evaluation of potential sub-service providers in the coordinating role as solution manager. CIS20 controls.
• DREAD and STRIDE security assessments.

• Design of a new cloud service
• Requirements Engineering
• API Design (REST API, Kafka)
• Consulting on architecture, feasibility and effort estimation
• Implementation of a microservice architecture
• Implementation of a Spring Boot web service
• Development of REST APIs including business and persistence logic
• Kafka consumers and producers
• Various Excel upload/download scenarios
• Change Data Capture
• Cloud provisioning with IaC/Terraform
• Go-live with 30,000 users
• Operation, support and bug fixing for other services

Environment/tools: GitLab, JIRA, Confluence, IntelliJ, Spring Boot, Java, Docker, Terraform, AWS ECS, Postgres, Apache Kafka, SAP Datasphere, JUnit, Debezium, Apache POI, Hibernate, JPA, Testcontainers