Oliver Gibbs

Independent Information Technology Professional (RHCE, SCNA and SCSA certified)

London, United Kingdom

Current
Past

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6 more...

Education
  • The Open University
  • The Open University
Recommended
Oliver has 17 recommendations 17 people have recommended Oliver
Connections
163 connections
Industry
Information Technology and Services
Websites

Oliver Gibbs’s Summary

An independent Information Technology professional, specialising in UNIX systems, storage and information security.

Have gained a varied background with experience gained within the academic, defence, finance, investment banking and telco sectors. Substantial experience of working on global enterprise projects including project management, deployments, process modelling and definition, documentation, task coordination & delegation and end management of engineers. Possess proven ITIL knowledge and experience, including change supervision, incident management and problem management.

An 'IT & Computing' graduate, determined to develop professionally, aspiring to achieve Chartered Engineer (CEng) status once qualified.

Certified in:
• Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, April 2007
• Sun Certified Systems Administrator (SCSA) for Solaris 10, June 2008
• Sun Certified Network Administrator (SCNA) for Solaris 10, May 2009

Current professional development goals:
• VMware Certified Professional (VCP) in VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3), aiming to attempt the examination by August.
• Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), aiming to attempt the examination by December.

Oliver Gibbs’s Specialties:

Systems: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v2.1 - v5, RHCE), Sun Solaris (2.6 - 10, SCNA+SCSA), Microsoft Windows (NT4, 2000 & 2003)
Virtualisation: Sun Logical Domains (LDoms) & Zones, VMware ESX 3.5
Storage: NetApp FAS and NearStore filers, NetApp Metrocluster, IBM DS-series, Spectralogic Spectra k-series & T-series libraries, Veritas NetBackup 4.x, 5.x, & 6.x.
Security: Authentication, UNIX system hardening
UNIX-Windows Integration: Quest Vintela (VAS) & Quest Management eXtensions (QMX)

Oliver Gibbs’s Experience

  • UNIX Systems Engineer

    Royal Bank of Scotland Group

    (Public Company; RBS; Banking industry)

    March 2009 — Present (5 months)

    • Worked on the RBS Worldpay Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) Mandatory Programme.
    • Analysed, designed, implemented, documented and established configuration management standards for UNIX, ensuring standards were PCI DSS v1.2 compliant.
    • Responsible for developing a hardened/secure standard operating environment (SOE) for Red Hat Enterprise Linux to meet PCI DSS compliance for both physical and VMware ESX hosted virtual machines. Automated the build process for complete unattended installations.
    • Analysed the business and PCI DSS requirements, designed, documented, scripted and tested the security policy for Red Hat Enterprise Linux hosts.
    • Authored a library of administrative maintenance scripts allowing for consistent configuration of UNIX systems.
    • Created custom, signed RPM packages for standardised configurations and quality assurance testing their functionality. This included compiling all drivers for HP ProLiant DL-series servers, packaging software such as EnCase Enterprise SAFE servlets and the Centennial Discovery auditing agent.
    • Responsible for testing, provisioning and deploying Red Hat Network Satellite Server 5.2. An automated and repeatable process was established using Kickstart profiling and Satellite answer files.
    • Assisted with the design and implementation of a PCI DSS compliant mail solution using hardened Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 based SMTP proxies and clustered Cisco Ironport C360 appliances.
    • Contract role based in Cambridge, UK.

  • UNIX Systems Configuration Engineer

    Barclays Capital

    (Public Company; BARC; Investment Banking industry)

    August 2008 — October 2008 (3 months)

    • Responsible for developing and packaging an upgrade to the QMX Configuration Manager 2007 agent for UNIX platforms from v1.5 to v2.0, integrating UNIX configuration management into Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007. The upgraded QMX agent was deployed to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Solaris and VMware ESX platforms.
    • Customised installation, reconfiguration and troubleshooting scripts written in Bash UNIX script and Perl script. Packaged the installation in Red Hat RPM and Solaris PKG formats.
    • Document the deployment configuration to ease ongoing support and troubleshooting of the agent.
    • Contract role, based in Canary Wharf, London.

  • Senior UNIX Systems Engineer

    Information Technology Management Services (ITMS)

    (Information Technology and Services industry)

    February 2008 — June 2008 (5 months)

    • Worked on the Members Equity Bank account, on-site at the customers office in Melbourne, Australia.
    • Responsible for the maintenance, support and patching of the UNIX environment, consisting of Sun Solaris 2.6, 8, 9 and 10. Supported physical domains on Sun Enterprise E10k hardware and their SSPs (System Service Processors).
    • Addressed system security concerns and assisted with annual security audits conducted by Deloitte.
    • Provided architectural and operational reviews of a new NetApp FAS based SAN and a disk-based backup solution using NetBackup 6.5, NetApp NearStore storage and SnapVault for NetBackup. Assisted solving challenges posed by the technologies, devising new procedures and operational testing prior to handover.
    • Monitored SLAs to ensure the correct service levels are received and provided. Feedback provided to the Operations Manager and attended meetings with vendor account managers.
    • 5 month contract based in Melbourne, Australia.

  • UNIX/Linux Technical Specialist

    nabCapital (part of National Australia Bank)

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; NAB; Banking industry)

    July 2007 — January 2008 (7 months)

    • Responsible for a global migration project, streamlining authentication by integrating Microsoft Active Directory authentication on all Red Hat Enterprise Linux (AS3 through AS4) and Solaris (8 through 10) hosts using Quest Vintela v3. Migrated hosts included virtualisations provisioned using VMware Infrastructure Server 3.
    • Designed, documented, tested and implemented Group Policy Objects (GPOs) within Active Directory defining UNIX host settings, including SUDO configuration.
    • Defined, documented and refined engineering processes of the project, allowed for automating tasks and consistent migrations through the use of IVPs.
    • Engaged application and infrastructure managers within the bank, negotiating and coordinating migrations to Vintela.
    • 6 month contract based in Melbourne, Australia.

  • Customer Operations Engineer

    NTT Europe Online

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; NTT; Telecommunications industry)

    May 2006 — June 2007 (1 year 2 months)

    • Responsible for the build, configuration, QA and deployment of customer enterprise solutions hosted within the EU. Provided ‘on-call’ support, incident resolution & liased with customers.
    • Supported solutions using Microsoft Windows Server 2003 clusters, RedHat Enterprise Linux v3, v4 & v5, Sun Solaris 9 & 10, VMware ESX, Apache & Microsoft IIS, Nortel Alteon load balancers & SSL accelerators, NetApp FAS filers & NetCache web caches, Cisco PIX, CheckPoint FireWall-1, FortiNet, Juniper NetScreen & Nokia IPSO firewalls and VPNs.
    • Responsible for Veritas NetBackup & tape library robots in UK. Upgraded the UK from NetBackup v4.5 to v5.1MP5 on Sun Netra T1s, then assisted an upgrade to v6.0MP4 on Sun T2000 media servers & 10Gbps Ethernet infrastructure. Planned, installed and migrated the UK from SCSI-based Spectralogic Spectra 64k (AIT-3) to Fibre Channel based Spectra T950 (LTO-3) tape libraries employing Cisco MDS 9124 FC fabric switches & FC-attached disk-staging.

  • Senior Systems Administrator

    SunGard Trading and Risk Systems

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; SDS; Computer Software industry)

    December 2001 — February 2003 (1 year 3 months)

    • Role included 1st through 3rd line support of Microsoft Windows 2000, RedHat Enterprise Linux, Sun Solaris and Cisco Catalyst 5500 switches and 3500 routers. Responsible for maintaining the in-house NIS authentication domain, worldwide.
    • Developed Perl scripts automating the annual security audit process for both Windows and UNIX authentication domains. Provided ‘per-office’ audits, short-listing policy violations, increasing the reliability while reducing the time and costs involved.
    • Project work included heading and formulating European ERP (Enterprise Recovery Planning) project for European offices and completing a WAN migration from ISDN to frame relay PVCs with redundant ISDN BRI backup for all European offices.
    • Member of corporate discussions planning a corporation-wide TCP/IP migration project from many disjointed class B subnets to a coherent class A subnet and the potential routing issues from migrating subsidiaries on a global scale into a large extranet.

  • Infrastructure Manager

    SunGard Trading and Risk Systems

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; SDS; Computer Software industry)

    September 2000 — July 2001 (11 months)

    • Managed the London MIS team maintaining IT and network infrastructures across European offices. Coordinated project involvement and London MIS team efforts with European, American and Asian teams. Coordinated, scheduled and participated in 24/7 ‘on-call’ support duties. Reported directly to the global MIS Vice President.
    • Responsible for providing 1st through 3rd line support of Windows NT4/2000, RedHat Enterprise Linux and Sun Solaris (2.6, 7 and 8) production LANs, WAN interconnections, NetApp FAS filers and Veritas NetBackup. Supported CheckPoint FW-1 firewalls, CheckPoint VPN-1 gateways, RSA ACE/Server and SecurID authentication tokens.
    • Designed, implemented and tested the company’s worldwide hierarchical web cache model using Squid on Linux servers.
    • Specified and implemented technological solutions for newly acquired companies migrating into the Sungard ‘standard’. Covered network infrastructure, information security policies, server hardware, and telecoms equipment.

  • Systems Programmer

    Cranfield University

    (Educational Institution; 51-200 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

    June 1999 — September 2000 (1 year 4 months)

    • Responsible for 3rd line support of Windows NT 4.0 Server and UNIX servers supplying essential services campus-wide.
    • Regulated the installation, configuration and security policies of Samba servers on Sun Solaris and Linux (RedHat & SuSE). Maintained campus printing services, Windows and UNIX spooler servers and all printing hardware.
    • Designed, tested and recommended a campus migration to the Windows 2000 platform. Developed a proposed Active Directory structure integrating the existing NIS authentication domain. Tests found SYN floods to 445/tcp forced Active Directory to send clear text SMB transactions instead of ciphertext: the security vulnerability was reported to Microsoft.
    • Developed an interface integrating the legacy student print accounting system with the campus Oracle database using Perl.

  • Senior IT Assistant

    Mazars Neville Russell

    (Privately Held; 1001-5000 employees; Accounting industry)

    December 1998 — June 1999 (7 months)

    • Responsible for the Chilterns region, supporting IT infrastructure across three sites for over 100 users. Managed two junior staff members providing support of the IT infrastructure.
    • Supported Windows NT4 Workstation clients, Novell NetWare 3.2 & Lotus Notes R5 servers and ARCserve backups.
    • Developed standard operating environments (SOEs) for desktop and laptop provisioning.

  • Assistant Scientific Officer

    Defence Evaluation and Research Agency

    (Defense & Space industry)

    June 1998 — September 1998 (4 months)

    • Internship; responsible for a project to develop an ‘embedded system’ solution for equipment testing and capturing realtime data logging onboard fighter jet during test flights.
    • Was responsible for the electronic hardware design, the human-computer interface (HCI) required to enable the pilot to control the device and the software engineering of the underlying control systems.
    • The project was delivered ahead of time and was successful in its testing.

Oliver Gibbs’s Education

  • The Open University

    BSc(Hons) , Information Technology and Computing , 2003 — 2006

    • Subjects included: Object-oriented software development, software systems and their development, concurrency and distributed systems, digital communications, mathematics.
    • Data communications studied: Circuit- and packet-switched networks, PSTN, ISDN, SDH / Sonet, GSM, GPRS, 3G, TCP/IP (v4 and v6), data compression, encryption and public key infrastructure (PKI).
    • Programming languages studied: Java 2 (J2SE), Smalltalk, SQL, and UML.
    • Final year project: ‘Nomad: an extendable and portable, image transcoding HTTP proxy system for narrowband and wideband connections’. Project was graded with Distinction.

  • The Open University

    Diploma , Computing , 2003 — 2004

    • Subjects included: Object-oriented software development, software engineering methodologies.
    • Programming languages studied: Java 2 (J2SE), Smalltalk, and UML.

Additional Information

Oliver Gibbs’s Websites:

Oliver Gibbs’s Honors:

• Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE, #805007744625783) in Red Hat Enterprise Linux v5 (April 2007)
• Sun Certified Systems Administrator (SCSA) in Solaris 10 (June 2008)
• Sun Certified Network Administrator (SCNA) in Solaris 10 (May 2009)

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