AAAhmad Alassaf
Riyadh · Cybersecurity

Ahmad Alassaf

Cybersecurity professional: offensive security programmes, vulnerability management, and regulatory assurance.

Seven years in government and sovereign-fund environments, where assurance is judged by regulators and auditors. A strong offensive foundation, extended into ownership of the programmes that turn findings into sustained risk reduction: penetration-testing cycles, enterprise vulnerability management, and adversary and phishing simulations. The technical counterpart to auditors and the National Cybersecurity Authority, and the author of the policies, budgets, and evidence behind them.

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7+Years in offensive security
9Professional certifications
2Languages · Arabic, English
KSARiyadh based

Profile

My work sits between the attacker's view and the boardroom's. I began as a hands-on penetration tester and now own the programmes that decide where testing effort goes, how findings are prioritised, and how remediation is proven to auditors and regulators. That means scoping and sequencing assessments, governing the vulnerability-management cycle, running adversary and phishing simulations, and writing the policies, procedures, and budget cases that make security a managed function rather than a series of reports.

LocationRiyadh, Saudi Arabia
Current roleSenior Cybersecurity Analyst
EducationM.Sc. Cyber Security · Saudi Electronic University & Colorado State University Global (2023)
EducationB.Sc. Computer Engineering · University of Hail

Areas of practice

  • Penetration-testing programme planning and delivery across networks, web applications, and APIs, including scoping, scheduling, third-party assessor coordination, and remediation tracking.
  • Vulnerability-management programme design and operation: asset coverage, risk-based prioritisation, ownership, and closure metrics.
  • Attack simulation and phishing exercises that measure detection, response, and user awareness against realistic scenarios.
  • Regulatory and audit assurance: alignment with National Cybersecurity Authority controls, evidence preparation, and coordination with internal and external auditors.
  • Governance: security policy and procedure writing, budgeting for assessment and tooling programmes, and executive reporting.

Experience

Two long-tenure roles in high-assurance environments, both centered on offensive security and validation.

  1. Dec 2020 – PresentPublic Investment Fund

    Senior Cybersecurity Analyst

    Cyber security defense and exploitation

    • Own the annual penetration-testing programme end to end: scope by business criticality, sequence around release and audit calendars, manage third-party assessors, and hold owners to remediation deadlines.
    • Run vulnerability management as a governed cycle with agreed coverage, risk-based prioritisation, named owners, and closure metrics reported to leadership.
    • Design adversary-emulation and phishing campaigns and feed the results back into detection rules, response playbooks, and awareness content.
    • Act as technical point of contact for audits and National Cybersecurity Authority reviews, mapping controls to evidence and closing findings on time.
    • Author security policies and procedures and prepare budget cases for assessment services and tooling.
    • Assess systems against hardening baselines and report deviations with practical remediation.
  2. Feb 2019 – Nov 2020Ministry of Foreign Affairs

    Senior Information Security Engineer

    Application and infrastructure security assessment

    • Delivered network, web application, and API penetration tests across black, gray, and crystal box engagements for a diplomatic environment with a large internet-facing footprint.
    • Led compromise assessments and web application firewall request audits, identifying active exposure and tuning protections for production services.
    • Presented findings with business impact to owners and management, and verified fixes through re-testing.

Selected work

Public summaries of independent projects. Client work, internal systems, and implementation details are deliberately excluded. Longer write-ups are on the blog.

Security · Machine learning

TrustedChain

Threat-intelligence service that classifies domains, IPs, and hashes against a large curated IOC feed, with model-assisted and retrieval-augmented modes. Built around precision, analyst triage cost, and explainability rather than raw accuracy.

Detection engineeringIOC feedsAPI product
Security monitoring

SIEM and hardening program

Self-hosted SIEM with file-integrity monitoring, threat-intel enrichment, and custom detection rules across cloud and on-premise hosts, paired with a hardening and backup-verification routine for production services.

SIEMFIMIncident readiness
IoT · Edge AI

Edge video analytics

On-premise camera analytics on Raspberry Pi with hardware-accelerated inference, local-only processing, and event-driven home-automation integrations. Reliability engineering for real hardware, not demos.

Raspberry PiComputer visionMQTT
AI systems

Agent operating model

Multi-agent workflows for operations and research with separated roles for planning, execution, review, and follow-up. Bounded tool access, human-in-the-loop for sensitive actions, and audit-friendly execution paths.

OrchestrationLeast privilegeObservability
Product · Data

Real-estate valuation platform

Bilingual valuation platform for licensed appraisers with an automated market-comparables engine built on public deed data and daily listing feeds, signed PDF reports, and a data-quality dashboard.

Next.jsPostGISData pipelines
IoT · SaaS

Smart-building device platform

Multi-tenant device-management platform for smart buildings: one dashboard for locks, switches, and sensors across many properties, with remote control, live status, per-unit energy tracking, and an API for automation.

Smart buildingsMulti-tenantDevice API

How an engagement runs

Scoped, authorized, and evidence-driven from the first call to the last retest.

01

Scope and rules

Clear targets, authorization, windows, and escalation contacts before anything is touched.

02

Assess and exploit

Manual testing first. Tools support the work, they do not replace it. Impact is demonstrated safely.

03

Report for two audiences

Reproducible technical findings for engineers, business-risk framing for leadership.

04

Fix and retest

Remediation guidance, then verification that the fix actually closes the gap.

Certifications

Offensive and defensive credentials, with the date each was earned.

OSCE

Offensive Security Certified Expert

Offensive Security · Nov 2020

GDAT

GIAC Defending Advanced Threats

GIAC / SANS Institute · Feb 2023

GXPN

GIAC Exploit Researcher and Advanced Penetration Tester

GIAC / SANS Institute · Jun 2020

OSCP

Offensive Security Certified Professional

Offensive Security · Dec 2018

GPEN

GIAC Penetration Tester

GIAC / SANS Institute · Jul 2019

GWAPT

GIAC Web Application Penetration Tester

GIAC / SANS Institute · Jan 2020

eCPPT

Certified Professional Penetration Tester

eLearnSecurity · Aug 2018

eJPT

Certified Junior Penetration Tester

eLearnSecurity · Jan 2018

EMC

Cloud Infrastructure and Services

EMC Academic Associate

Education

May 2021 – Jun 2023Master in Cyber Security

Saudi Electronic University in partnership with Colorado State University Global

Jan 2017Bachelor of Computer Engineering

University of Hail, Saudi Arabia

Skills

LinuxWindowsmacOSPythonPHPJavaScriptSQLVMwareVirtualBoxWeb & API testingNetwork testingAdversary emulationVulnerability managementNCA ECC alignmentAudit coordinationPolicy & procedure writingSecurity budgetingExecutive reporting

Recommendation

“Professional in delivering tasks, structured thinking, well understanding of environment, multi-tasking, out of the box thinker, result oriented and professional.”

Public recommendation excerpt visible on LinkedIn.