BSI IT-Grundschutz Experts in Germany

• Conducted security assessments for supplier qualification, business unit onboarding, and ongoing reviews of service providers and partners (Ongoing Assurance).
• Assessed technical and organizational measures (TOMs) against GDPR and information security requirements.
• Handled security reviews and approval processes in the Global Approval Navigator (OneTrust).
• Advised business units and IT on information security, security requirements, and risk-appropriate measures.
• Supported the development of SOC/SIEM processes and tools as part of the ISMS in line with ISO/IEC 27001.
• Analyzed cyber threats and coordinated security objectives and measures to address Security Findings with the SOC team.
• Monitored and assessed current security advisories and security-related metrics (KPIs).
• Reviewed, assessed risks, and approved exception requests (Security Exceptions).
• Independently analyzed and handled Security Events and supported the handling of security incidents.
• Planned and supported awareness initiatives to strengthen security awareness.
• Created, implemented, and reviewed information security policies and standards.
• Conducted protection needs analyses and gap assessments to identify security gaps and risk deviations.
• Defined and reviewed technical and organizational risk treatment measures.
• Advised on Third Party Governance with consideration of DORA, ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27005, ISO/IEC 42001, and BCM in line with ISO 22301.

• Founder of CheironX: AI-supported GRC management (ISO 27001, BSI IT-Grundschutz, TISAX, DORA)
• Strategic focus on Agentic AI and GenAI for modern IT Governance, Risk & Compliance Management
• IT interim management and strategic consulting

• Operation and further development of the network and security infrastructure.

• Monitoring, analysis and resolution of network and security incidents.

• Cross-departmental collaboration with other teams on operations and further development, and reporting.

• Firewall vulnerability analysis.

• Firewall access requests.

• Troubleshooting IP communication issues on network and firewall infrastructure.

• Security-critical IT infrastructure, processing of personal data, compliance with legal requirements.

• Products: Palo Alto Networks Firewalls, Cisco ACI, Checkpoint Firewalls, F5

• Technologies: SDN, SDWAN, Cisco EPIC, Cisco ACI

Management of several MFA methods for centralized authentication within a group. Interface between various stakeholders such as Support, Finance, Developers, and Security departments. Assessment of compliance requirements such as KRITIS. Budget controlling and monitoring of KPIs and SLAs. Support with internal and external audits on MFA topics and with connecting new systems. Review of operational documentation. Participation in steering committees and leadership of service review meetings and decision-making committees.

Tools/Frameworks: FIDO, Yubikey, Veridium, BSI Grundschutz, NIST

Management of data protection & IT security-related projects. Adjustments to knowledge management and consulting processes.

Activities:

• Data protection consulting
• Process optimization in in-house consulting
• Interface to specialist departments, IT security, development and management

• Established a cyber resilience framework for AI-accelerated threats in the Frontier AI Threat Endurance (FATE) program: capability assessments, maturity assessments and gap analyses covering cyber security, operational resilience, incident response, recovery and governance, followed by target concepts and improvement measures
• Supported action owners from specification through implementation: implementation roadmaps, decision papers, management presentations and governance reporting, as well as audit- and supervision-ready documentation; managed stakeholders from IT, Information Security, Risk Management, Operational Resilience, Business Continuity and the business units

Business analysis / requirements engineering for the introduction of a central authorization platform:

• Analysis of existing requirements for the use of IGA solutions (NetIQ, MidPoint) in an existing IAM cluster
• Capturing requirements as epics and user stories (JIRA) to provide a comprehensive description of the use of an IGA solution for central access control across connected platforms and applications.
• Functional solution descriptions (Confluence) for various lifecycle processes, such as Identity Lifecycle (ILC), Role Lifecycle (RLC), Structure Lifecycle (SLC), and Application Lifecycle
• RBAC: Design of a role model in the IGA solution to automate access provisioning as much as possible, capturing application and business roles
• Approach for onboarding applications to the IGA tool, integrating Keycloak (ID Provider).
• Functions and processes for recertifying entitlement objects and roles, and for assigning / removing them from personalized identities.
• Functions and processes for audit-proof documentation and reporting of managed data and processes in the IGA / IAM environment.
• Planning, execution, and documentation of QA / testing for the 1st implementation phase of the MidPoint IGA solution in the IAM cluster.
• Planning a roadmap for the step-by-step testing and introduction of the IGA solution.

• Strategic planning, detailed technical preparation and operational management of an email gateway migration in a security-critical government environment.
• Preparation of the technical specification and development of technical concepts and migration approaches in line with BSI requirements.
• Technical requirements management with business units, information security and operations.
• Coordination of external service providers, integrators and implementation partners; maintenance of project plans, milestones, resources, risks and dependencies.
• Regular reporting to project management, the program environment and internal stakeholders.

As Germany’s only large integrated energy company, EnBW covers the entire value chain—from energy generation and distribution to serving customers. The company is expanding its renewable energy sources, working toward a socially responsible coal phase-out, and advancing key technologies such as the use of green hydrogen. A rapid energy transition and achieving climate neutrality by 2035 are priorities for EnBW.  Developing and implementing an end-to-end process view that takes both technical and organizational aspects into account  Ensuring end-to-end control of all IAM-related technical services  Establishing clear responsibilities and accountabilities across the IAM landscape  Working with various departments to identify and optimize an end-to-end architecture and act as the Single Point of Contact (SPoC) for Information Security  Introducing and monitoring governance policies to ensure compliance and security  Continuously improving IAM processes and systems through regular audits and service reviews  Taking part in external process audits as part of official audits against ISO standards  Further developing the policy that sets administrative requirements and procedures, and aligning it with administrative departments  Conceptually developing the KPI system for measuring process quality

• Requirements management, process planning, interface function, ISMS setup, and documentation
• Setup and establishment of an ISMS according to ISO 27001 and establishment of emergency management / ITSCM
• Coordination of the circumstances with the public-sector IT service provider
• Consideration of KRITIS relevance within the scope and implementation of a B3S
• Development of requirements for document control and the continuous improvement process
• Preparation of relevant project documents
• Analysis of existing processes and preparation of guidelines
• Requirements gathering for ISMS and ITSCM and coordination with the IT service provider, including definition of interfaces
• Analysis of communication processes and escalation paths
• Review of documents for risk management, ISMS, emergency preparedness, and emergency response
• Redesign of the complete documentation and preparation of new relevant documents
• Development of necessary rules, policies, and concepts
• Interface between customer and service provider to ensure document quality
• Coordination of protection needs with specialist departments, particularly regarding KRITIS relevance, and planning of resulting measures
• Development of preventive measures to minimize the risk of data center outages in scenarios such as pandemics or ransomware attacks
• Definition of the test strategy for IT emergency exercises
• Initiation of necessary awareness training measures for specialist departments
• External Information Security Officer
• Introduction of document control

• Project: ESU Windows and SQL Server Consolidation / Configuration Management in ServiceNow
• Prepared an as-is analysis of all servers worldwide
• Prepared an as-is analysis of all SQL servers worldwide
• Conducted requirements analyses for SQL and server migrations
• Coordinated requirements with partners for migrations to Hyper-V (on-premises) or Azure Cloud
• Facilitated regular status meetings (Jour Fixe)
• Developed roadmaps and solution models for server migrations
• Set up test scenarios
• Facilitated workshops for the rollout of a global admin team
• Designed data models (CMDB) in ServiceNow
• Led workshops for the CMDB data model
• Developed solution models for the CMDB
• Created end-to-end configuration documentation and work instructions for the CMDB
• Prepared reports for license management
• Defined KPIs for data quality in ServiceNow
• Created a service catalog
• Facilitated workshops to define service requests
• Acted as interface between requirements analysis and the ServiceNow development team
• Systems used: Windows 7, Windows 10, Microsoft Office 365/2010, Windows Server 20xx, SQL Server 20xx, SharePoint, Azure Cloud, Hyper-V, ServiceNow, various tools

• Completed the integration of log sources into Microsoft Sentinel, including GCP workloads – centralized consolidation of all security-relevant events from Azure and GCP environments for complete end-to-end telemetry and comprehensive compliance evidence
• Developed custom rules and use cases based on the GFG Use-Case Library and the MITRE ATT&CK Matrix to cover company-specific threats and GFG-relevant scenarios with precise, mapped detection rules
• Tuned detection rules to minimize false positives, optimized detection thresholds, and modeled exceptions – enabling the SOC to work with relevant, prioritized alerts while reducing Mean Time to Detect/Respond
• Built SOAR capabilities in Sentinel by developing playbooks to automate recurring response processes such as containment, user and host isolation, and ticketing – shorter response times and 24/7 scalability
• Designed and built a log transformation solution to normalize and enrich incoming raw logs (GeoIP, CMDB, threat intelligence) and convert them into a consistent schema for high-performance KQL queries, use case logic, and correlations
• Managed Azure security through Azure Policies to enforce security and compliance standards, prevent drift, and continuously remediate deviations
• Operated the Defender XDR portal to link endpoint, identity, email, and SaaS signals with Sentinel findings, enable holistic incident triage, and orchestrate measures directly from XDR

Technologies: Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender XDR, Azure Policy, KQL, GCP, MITRE ATT&CK

As part of this project, the existing active network infrastructure was modernized and made fit for the future. The goal was to introduce a powerful, secure and scalable network and WLAN infrastructure, including a Network Access Control (NAC) solution to improve network security and centralized access control.

At the beginning of the project, a comprehensive requirements analysis was carried out, taking into account the technical, operational and security-related requirements of the hospital sites. On this basis, a technical tender was prepared for new switches, WLAN access points and the NAC solution.

The successful implementation of the project established a modern, standardized and secure network infrastructure that meets the growing requirements for availability, mobility and IT security in hospital operations.

Activities:

• Supporting the tender process, including technical evaluation of offers and bidder evaluation
• Leading and managing the entire project implementation
• Coordinating the project process with internal stakeholders, business units and hospital IT
• Managing external service providers during the implementation and installation of the systems
• Monitoring the implementation, including quality control, project acceptance and defect management
• Coordinating and managing communication between hospital IT and external service providers as part of the NAC implementation
• Managing escalations in the event of technical and organizational challenges
• Ongoing budget monitoring and control of project expenses and additional costs
• Preparing decision papers for management on project changes, additional services and risks

As a Council Member at GLG (Gerson Lehrman Group), the world’s leading expert network, I provide organizations, investment firms, and consulting companies with expert discussions on demand – wherever specialized knowledge in information security, IT governance, and regulatory compliance is needed.

My assessments are based on many years of practical experience in highly regulated industries: from building and implementing information security management systems (ISMS according to ISO 27001), IT risk and vulnerability management, and business continuity (ISO 22301) to the practical implementation of European regulations such as DORA, NIS2, BAIT, and the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA).

The cooperation is project- and discussion-based. I provide decision-makers with a practical perspective gained from real-world experience on cyber risks, security governance, and operational resilience – exactly when it is needed.