Avery Sexton - Owner, Country Road Technology Group

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Work Background

Covenant HealthCyber Security Manager

Jan. 2023Knoxville, Tennessee, United StatesCovenant created Cyber Security department & promoted me to Manager in January 2023 to manage a team of 5 full time employees, 1 part time employee, & 1 intern positions. Duties include time keeping, performance evaluations, salary budgeting. Work to ensure 24/7 monitoring of security systems by our Operations team & from our Managed Detection & Response vendor as well as verify all teams are responding to threats rapidly. Reduced phishing attack surface by 60% by limiting outside email access to only approved staff. Manage $3 million annual cyber security budget of tools, equipment, audits, & staffing. My team consistently meets SLA’s of support requests by 98%. Work with Compliance & Internal Audit departments to produce & implement security policies & procedures appropriate for healthcare environment & HIPAA compliance. Conduct a risk assessment to identify critical assets, vulnerabilities, & threats. Use this to guide security priorities & resource allocation. Work with Managers of Desktop, Server, & Network teams to harden systems, increase patching cadence, improve access controls, & increase network segmentation by using technologies we previously implemented where possible. Managed project to add multi-factor authentication for remote access & admin accounts, & limit admin privileges. Implement email security stack - filtering, sandboxing, DMARC, DKIM to block phishing/malware. Conduct regular security exercises to validate controls & response capabilities. Leverage learnings to improve security posture. Develop incident response plans & playbooks so teams are ready to act on threats. Conduct tabletop exercises. Work with Training team on security awareness training for all staff & conduct tests with simulated phishing campaigns. Maintain inventory of assets, data flows, & integrations. Review configurations & access controls regularly. Foster relationships with CIO to align security with business goals & risk tolerance.

Covenant HealthTeam Lead Supervisor - Information Security

Jul. 2019 - Jan. 2023Knoxville, Tennessee, United StatesI quickly grew my team to include 3 full-time staff and 2 part-time interns. This growth pushed me into a supervisory role where I managed time tracking in Kronos, conducted annual reviews, and oversaw the team's workload. As the team expanded, we looked for ways to improve security without greatly increasing spending. With more staff, our SLA for resolving support tickets improved to 98% meeting or exceeding standards. One cost-saving upgrade was replacing our ArcSight SIEM with on-prem LogRhythm SIEM/SOAR appliances. In addition to savings, LogRhythm improved our reporting capabilities and let other teams access relevant logs. I created daily reports on firewall, switch, IDS/IPS, and Windows system changes. These are sent to managers to audit processes. I led a year-long project reviewing endpoint protection products. We migrated from Trend ApexONE to SentinelONE with Vigilance MDR. This improved visibility, provided 24/7 monitoring, reduced complexity, and dramatically cut costs. To further simplify security, we migrated from on-prem Forcepoint Websense to cloud-hosted Mimecast Web Security. This extended protections to guest networks, securing patients and visitors. With our Network team, we added BlueCat Edge for DNS query visibility needed for investigations. We also implemented Mimecast DMARC to reduce spoofed emails impersonating us. Finally, my team took over managing Citrix ShareFile, TLS certificates, MediGate, and ExtraHop. In summary, I leveraged solutions like LogRhythm, SentinelONE, Mimecast, and BlueCat to strengthen security posture in a cost-effective manner, while scaling up staffing and improving SLAs. I implemented new oversight procedures to enhance governance through daily change reporting.

Covenant HealthSenior Analyst - Information Security

Aug. 2016 - Jun. 2019Knoxville, Tennessee, United StatesPromoted to Security Analyst and tasked with creating and leading Covenant's Information Security efforts and build a team to support it. Utilizing tools such as MimeCast, WebSense, Netscout nGenius, Trend Micro's Deep Discovery Inspector and Deep Discovery Email Inspector, HiTrust Threat XChange, Recorded Future, SafeBreach, and HP's ArcSight to improve our ability to identify, protect, detect, and respond to threats inside and outside of environment. I created and lead teams that rapidly researched, evaluated, purchased and deployed various security products : * A team to replace McAfee VirusScan & ePO with Trend Micro's products including OfficeScan XG on desktops, Deep Security on servers, Scan Mail for Exchange & Deep Discovery Email Inspector. * A team to replace McAfee Disk Encryption with Trend Micro Full Disk Encryption. * A project and team to replace McAfee Email Gateway with MimeCast's cloud based Email Security product as our primary email filter and DLP layer. * A team to deploy Trend Micro's Deep Discovery Analyser, Control Manager, and Deep Discovery Inspector. * A team to consolidate existing security controls including ArcSight ESM and Logger, Websense, Netscout nGenius, and Trend Micro Tipping Point. Specialties: MimeCast, SafeBreach, RegEx, Citrix XenApp & XenServer, Windows Server & Desktop OS, McAfee ePO, Netscaler, Trend Micro: OfficeScan XG, Deep Security, SMEX, DDEI, DDI, DDAN, Control Manager.

Covenant HealthSenior System Analyst - Server

Jul. 2015 - Aug. 2016Knoxville, Tennessee, United StatesMaintain Windows 2003 thru 2012 R2 Servers, Citrix XenApp 5 and XenApp 6.5, XenServer 5.6 through 6.5, Provisioning 5.6, Windows System Update Services, Netscaler Load Balancing and SSL Offloading systems and applications. Provide additional support for Exchange 2010 based Outlook clients, Windows Active Directory domains, McAfee VirusScan and ePO. Backup systems via IBM Tivoli Storage Manager. Expanding roles into Information Security.

Covenant HealthSystems Analyst - Server

Sep. 2007 - Jul. 2015Knoxville, Tennessee, United StatesInstall and maintain Windows 2003 thru 2012 R2 Servers, Citrix XenApp 5 and XenApp 6.5, XenServer 5.6 through 6.2, Provisioning 5.6, Windows System Update Services, Netscaler Load Balancing and SSL Offloading systems and applications. Provide additional support for Exchange 2010 based Outlook clients, Windows Active Directory domains, McAfee VirusScan and ePO. Backup systems via IBM Tivoli Storage Manager.

Tennessee Technology CenterInstructor

Jan. 2007 - Sep. 2007Huntsville, TNI was asked by the former County Mayor, who now runs the Tennessee Technology Center in Huntsville, TN, if I would teach a new class he wanted to offer at no cost to Senior Citizens or those on unemployment and discounted cost to everyone else. The class I taught for 22, 3 hour sessions was focused on what the class told me they wanted to learn. I put together my own materials based on their needs and instructed them on computer hardware, using Windows XP, Internet Explorer 6.0, Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Email, and Google email, calendars, and contacts. The feed back provided to the Center Director via a survey he administered was the highest scoring survey for any class that had been taught at that time.

Scott County HospitalI.T. Director

Jan. 2004 - Sep. 2007Oneida, Tennessee, United StatesDesigned and built 2003 Server based DNS, DHCP, centralized print queues, central data repository, and Active Directory, Exchange 2003, SQL Server 2000, Ghost Solutions Suite, BackupExec 9.1, NAI ePO and VirusScan 8.0i, Windows Server Update Service all for serving 350 user accounts for a 24/7 Critical Access facility in Rural East Tennessee. Created support team and "Help Desk" using open-source software. Performed annual reviews for team. Participated in annual budget process.

United States CellularServer Administrator III

Apr. 1998 - Jan. 2004Knoxville, Tennessee, United StatesTwice awarded stock options for being in the top 1% of the company, based on performance reviews, objective completion, and budget management. Maintained a Windows NT/2000 server LAN/WAN environment with 100 servers, 1900+ users, 1600+ computer accounts, dispersed over 7 different market cities. Installed and maintained a dispersed Microsoft Exchange 5.5 Server environment, including over 2100 user and group mailboxes.