Case studies

Selected work.

Enterprise security architecture, multi-cloud hardening, vCISO advisory, and SOC transformation case studies for scaling and regulated organisations.

Financial services SIEM migration to Google SecOps

Google SecOps Chronicle Microsoft Sentinel Financial services Financial services

Challenge

A financial services firm was operating Microsoft Sentinel with >1.2PB of daily log volume across AWS, Azure, and on-premises infrastructure. Alert quality had degraded, and the SOC was spending 60% of its time on false positives rather than real investigations.

Approach: Conducted a 6-week assessment covering log source inventory, detection rule usage analysis, and compliance gap mapping. Designed a target-state architecture on Google SecOps with a shared BindPlane ingestion layer, allowing parallel Sentinel and SecOps operation during migration.

Delivery: Executed a phased migration over 8 months, moving 42 log sources and 127 detection rules. Implemented a canonical schema for identity, host, and cloud events. Established a 90-day parallel run comparing detection coverage between platforms.

60% Reduction in false positives
42 Log sources migrated

Outcome

The migrated Google SecOps environment achieved 98% detection parity with the legacy Sentinel setup while reducing ingestion costs by 35%. The SOC reported a 3x improvement in investigation throughput. The legacy Sentinel environment was decommissioned after the 90-day parallel validation period.

Technologies: Google SecOps, Chronicle SIEM-SOAR, Microsoft Sentinel, BindPlane, AWS, Azure, GCP, Microsoft Defender

Read the related SIEM migration guide →

Multi-cloud security uplift for a UK SaaS company

AWS & Azure GCP Wiz & Tenable CSPM & CWPP IaC security

Challenge

A UK-headquartered SaaS company expanding across AWS, Azure, and GCP had no centralised cloud security posture. Each engineering team was provisioning resources independently, leading to IAM drift, unencrypted storage, and non-compliant network configurations.

Approach: Conducted cloud security architecture reviews across all three providers using Wiz and Tenable.io CSPM/CWPP engines, mapped existing controls to ISO 27001 and NIST frameworks, and built a remediation roadmap prioritised by risk.

Delivery: Implemented landing zone guardrails using AWS Organizations SCPs, Azure Policy, and GCP Organization Policy. Deployed Wiz CSPM and Checkov-based IaC scanning in CI/CD pipelines. Established a shared security posture dashboard with monthly risk reviews for the engineering leadership team.

87% Compliance score improvement
15 Critical risks remediated

Outcome

Achieved ISO 27001 alignment across all three cloud providers within 4 months. Reduced critical security findings from weekly scans by 87%. Established a repeatable secure engineering process that continues to operate post-engagement through IaC guardrails.

Technologies: AWS, Azure, GCP, Wiz, Tenable.io, CSPM, CWPP, Terraform, Checkov, Open Policy Agent

Read the related cloud security review guide →

Virtual CISO advisory for a growing fintech scale-up

vCISO Governance Board reporting ISO 27001

Challenge

A fintech preparing for Series B funding needed to demonstrate credible security governance to investors and regulators. No permanent CISO on staff, and the engineering team had no formal security programme.

Approach: Provided fractional vCISO advisory at 12 hours per month, covering security strategy, risk assessment, policy development, and investor-ready reporting. Coordinated with the existing engineering lead to avoid disruption.

Delivery: Delivered a 12-month security roadmap, ISO 27001 gap analysis with remediation plan, vendor security assessment framework, and monthly board-level security reports with risk ratings, key metrics, and executive summaries.

95% ISO 27001 readiness
8 Weeks to Series B

Outcome

The company completed Series B funding at a £280M valuation with no security-related due diligence issues. ISO 27001 certification was achieved 4 months post-engagement. The vCISO relationship transitioned to quarterly advisory sessions for ongoing programme support.

Technologies: ISO 27001, SOC 2, vendor assessment framework, risk management

Read the related vCISO guide →

Enterprise IT Automation & Cloud FinOps Transformation for Retail Giant

IT Automation Cloud FinOps Terraform Ansible Retail Tech

Challenge

A global retail enterprise operating across AWS and Azure was spending over £3.2M/yr on unoptimised multi-cloud infrastructure, with manual environment provisioning taking 3+ weeks per sprint.

Approach: Conducted a 4-week platform engineering assessment. Designed modular Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) templates in Terraform and OpenTofu, automated server configuration using Ansible, and established real-time FinOps cost governance rules.

Delivery: Automated 85% of legacy workloads into GitHub Actions GitOps pipelines. Enforced automated shutdown schedules for non-production environments and integrated ServiceNow IT service workflows for self-service resource provisioning.

42% Annual cloud cost savings (£1.3M/yr)
4 Hours Environment provisioning (from 3 weeks)

Outcome

Achieved £1.3M in recurring annual cloud savings while increasing release frequency 5x with automated policy guardrails. Provisioning lead time dropped from 21 days to under 4 hours.

Technologies: AWS, Azure, Terraform, OpenTofu, Ansible, CloudHealth, GitHub Actions, ServiceNow

Zero Trust SASE & Identity Security Uplift for Healthcare Network

Zero Trust Entra ID & Okta SASE Healthcare PAM

Challenge

A regional healthcare provider with 28 medical facilities and 14,000 endpoint devices had fragmented legacy VPN infrastructure, unmonitored privileged accounts, and elevated ransomware exposure.

Approach: Designed a unified Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) and Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR) roadmap replacing legacy VPNs with Entra ID Conditional Access and Okta PAM.

Delivery: Deployed Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) microsegmentation across 28 sites, enforced FIDO2 phishing-resistant MFA for 9,000 clinicians and staff, and automated EDR deployment across 14,000 endpoints.

100% VPN access migrated to Zero Trust SASE
0 Privilege escalation incidents in 12 months

Outcome

Achieved 100% compliance on the NHS Data Security & Protection Toolkit (DSPT) audit while delivering frictionless, passwordless login for medical staff across clinical workstation fleets.

Technologies: Microsoft Entra ID, Okta PAM, CrowdStrike Falcon, Zscaler ZTNA, Palo Alto SASE, Windows Fleet

GenAI & AI-Assisted Application Security Review for Scale-Up Insurtech

GenAI Security LLM Guardrails DevSecOps Insurtech SAST/DAST

Challenge

An AI-first insurtech scale-up running LLM-generated code and automated customer agents was facing prompt injection vulnerabilities, unauthorized PII leakage risks, and unvetted open-source AI package dependencies.

Approach: Performed a comprehensive GenAI security audit across LLM prompt logic, RAG vector database pipelines, and AI-assisted code repositories.

Delivery: Integrated NeMo Guardrails for real-time LLM input/output filtering, configured Semgrep SAST rules in GitHub Actions, and established automated Software Supply Chain (SBOM) vulnerability scanning.

100% AI Agent endpoints hardened against prompt injection
48 Critical supply chain vulnerabilities fixed in CI/CD

Outcome

Passed SOC 2 Type II audit and major enterprise insurer vendor security reviews without a single high-risk finding, enabling key institutional distribution partnerships.

Technologies: NeMo Guardrails, Semgrep, SonarQube, Snyk, Python, LangChain, OpenAI API, GitHub Actions