Richard Whitt

Richard Whitt is a security operations center analyst at VPLS. Richard joined the managed security department early after its creation and worked with security management to help build and grow the department.

Whitt's responsibilities include responding to security events reported by customers, internal teams, or automated alerts and providing mitigation recommendations, investigation guidance, and lessons learned to management and customers. Richard also leads investigations and remediation response when internal security incidents are detected. In addition, they utilize indicators from threat intelligence feeds to threat hunt in VPLS's security systems and performs proactive threat hunting searches based on indicators of compromise provided by external threat intelligence feeds.

Whitt has also managed, deployed, and investigated alerts in VPLS's enterprise detection and response tools SentinelOne and Cylance. Richard has also managed, configured, evaluated, and troubleshot next generation firewalls and intrusion prevention/detection systems such as Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Meraki. As a result of their efforts, they have created cyber security playbooks and decision trees which have resulted in quicker new agent training, increased department performance, and standardization. In addition, they have performed monthly and quarterly firewall reviews and customer briefs which have resulted in higher customer satisfaction and an efficient firewall tuning process.

Currently, Whitt is managing, troubleshooting, and handling day-to-day tasks for Fortinet tools FortiAnalyzer, FortiManager, FortiGate, and FortiWeb. Richard is also creating custom event handlers in VPLS's security tools based on indicators from external threat intelligence feeds, internal reports and TTPs, or investigation findings. Richard is using tools such as Alienvault and Nessus to perform vulnerability management tasks. Furthermore, they are evaluating and choosing new network monitoring tools which will result in reduced man hours to deploy, better network mapping and monitoring, and improved investigations.

Richard Whitt has a Bachelor's Degree in Cyber Security from California State University-San Bernardino, an Associate's Degree in Business Administration from San Bernardino Valley College, and an Associate's Degree in Liberal Arts from San Bernardino Valley Community College. Richard also has a High School Diploma in General Studies from Fontana High School. Richard is certified by the CNSS (Committee on National Security Systems) in CNSS 4011 - Information Security Professionals and CNSS 4012 - Senior System Manager, and they are (ISC)² certified in Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). Richard is also CompTIA certified in CompTIA Network+ ce.