I have been working in the Information Technology field since 1995. At the end of 2004 I became an independent consultant & software developer and soon after became a co-founder of Juicy Media Ltd. During my career I have worked on engagements at clients in a wide variety of industry sectors, from a variety of automotive institutions, to entertainment and media organisations, computer security, telecommunications, printed circuit board design and manufacture, software development, as well as various charity organisations.

I graduated from the University of Glamorgan, South Wales, in 2006 with a distinction level M.Sc in the subject area of Information Security and Computer Crime. During the course of this postgraduate degree, I formally learnt the procedures and techniques to process digital crime scenes and perform structured penetration tests. Prior to completing this M.Sc I had graduated from the University of Salford, Manchester in 2002 with a Bachelor's Degree (Honours) in Computer Science. This is also backed-up by a more practical HND in Software Engineering and A-Levels in Computer Science & Electronics.

Experience

My experience includes a range of IT fields:

• Systems Administration of various Linux and Windows systems (RHEL, Gentoo, Solaris, Debian, CentOS and Windows 2003 & 2008 Server)
• Web Application Penetration Testing / Vulnerability Assessments
• Virtualisation system management using XenServer, VMware ESX + Virtual Center (or vSphere as its now known)
  
• Infrastructure server security reviews (Unix and Windows server hardening configuration reviews, router, switch and firewall config's and security policies)
• Local network and internet-based penetration testing
• Forensics investigations and Incident Response engagements
• LAN Configurations for complex web architectures utilising redundant Dell based servers and SAN's.
• Barracuda load balancing hardware for failover web architectures
• Wireless (WiFi & Bluetooth) network surveys
• ISO17799 compliance reviews
• Advanced large-scale web and application programming (mainly Backbase, ExtJS and PHP based Zend Framework projects)
  
• Complex cloud computing server configurations (Amazon based services utilising Right Scale technologies)

Development & Knowledge

I am an experienced "hands-on" developer with over 15 years of strong programming and database experience. I am also an active member of the British Computer Society (registered professional) providing support and development work for the Preston & District Branch website.

Below is a list of some of the more common skills & programming languages that I have used in both current projects and in the past:

• Web development/programming (Perl / PHP / ASP)
• Zend Framework for PHP web applications
• Backbase Enterprise AJAX framework
• ExtJS JavaScript framework
• Extensive JAVA programming
• MS Windows application programming Delphi
• MS Windows Server 2003 & 2008, Exchange & ISA
• MS Visual Studio 2005 (C# windows forms)
• MySQL , Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite and Amazon SimpleDB database management systems
• Bespoke Joomla & Mambo development in PHP
• Advanced search engine optimisation techniques and advice
• Lotus Domino LotusScript and Java Agent development
• With extensive use of Office, Lotus, Adobe & Macromedia products

More recently I've been dabbling with:

• Google Apps Engine development (JAVA and Python)
  
• Apple iPhone/iPad development

As well as working full-time for Juicy Media Ltd, I'm presently working on several articles in the field of web-based computer security.