Junior Infosec Engineer · White Hat Gaming · Cape Town, UTC+2

Imaad Faki

I write the rules that stop bad traffic at the edge, and the alerts that catch what gets through

Four years on one iGaming platform running regulated environments across the UK, US and Rest of World. Two watching it 24/7 from the NOC, two defending it from the security team.

Open to relocationValid Qatar QID and NOCCompTIA Security+ CE

edge-acl · web ACL sample feed
    1,284blocked
    48,210allowed
    3,077counted

    Simulated feed showing the kind of traffic my WAF rules sort every day

    Security for a platform that can't go offline

    In iGaming, an outage costs money by the minute and every login is a target. My work covers the full loop: block the obvious at the edge, detect the subtle in the logs, respond fast, then write it up so it doesn't happen twice.

    Junior Infosec Engineer

    Aug 2024 – Present

    White Hat Gaming · Information Security team · Cape Town

    Edge defence

    Owning the AWS WAF rule set

    • Country blocks, JA3 and JA4 TLS fingerprint blocks and rate limiting across client web ACLs
    • Custom scope-down rules so protections fit specific endpoints and sites without blocking real players
    • Worked with frontend developers to roll out WAF SDKs on web and mobile
    Detection

    Writing and maintaining SIEM detections

    • Detections for systems and newly discovered vulnerabilities
    • Keep the SIEM healthy, including fixing log retention so ingestion stays unthrottled
    • Triage of suspicious emails reported by staff
    Incident response

    From alert to post-mortem

    • Investigate and resolve security alerts and incidents quickly
    • Run RCAs and post-mortem debriefs once the issue is closed
    • Liaise with external pentesters and drive findings to fixes with internal teams
    Cloud and IaC

    Hardening the AWS estate

    • Provision new client AWS accounts through Terraform and GitHub PRs
    • MFA delete on critical S3 buckets, lifecycle policies for ECR images
    • ECR scan filters that focus on critical images, cutting cost and noise
    Governance

    Policy and ISO 27001 readiness

    • Wrote and reviewed security policies for company-wide attestation
    • Helped set up MDM policies on the road to ISO 27001 certification
    • Automated user off-boarding across company systems
    Awareness

    Security awareness across the company

    • Run the company-wide phishing campaign and present results to senior management
    • Helped evaluate phishing simulation vendors for the next programme
    • Host a monthly security session open to the whole company

    White Hat Gaming

    NOC L2 Support Engineer

    Oct 2022 – Jul 2024

    24/7US and EU shift rotation

    • Monitored US and UK/Rest-of-World gaming environments in DataDog: platform metrics, health checks, transactions, infrastructure and APM
    • Watched logs for security signals such as geo-location, IP and user-agent anomalies, and escalated to the right team
    • Opened P1/P2 incidents in OpsGenie and worked them to resolution in live war-rooms
    • Ran Jenkins and ArgoCD jobs from runbooks, including payment service and platform restarts
    • Managed release downtime, built monitors for new environments, and wrote RCAs and incident comms for external stakeholders

    Pristine InfoSolutions

    Cyber Security Analyst Trainee

    Mar 2021 – Jun 2021

    CTFCapture-the-flag training site

    • Helped build a capture-the-flag website that teaches students the difference between secure and insecure code
    • Studied and discussed HackerOne bug bounty write-ups with an assigned trainer
    • Competed in CTFs with fellow interns
    • Picked up SQL, JavaScript and Apache hosting along the way

    How I work

    Calm on the P1 call, clear in the write-up after

    Explain it plainly

    I present phishing results to senior management and run monthly security sessions for staff who don't work in tech. If they leave knowing what to do, the session worked.

    Write it down

    RCAs, post-mortems, policies and stakeholder updates. Good incident writing is how a team stops repeating the same outage.

    See it through

    Two years of night and weekend shifts taught me to stay with a problem until it's fixed, and to hand it over cleanly when it's someone else's turn.

    From commerce student to security engineer

    1. Now

      Working towards AWS Solutions Architect

      Going deeper on the platform I secure every day

    2. 2024

      Moved into the Infosec team

      Junior Infosec Engineer, White Hat Gaming. Earned Datadog Fundamentals.

    3. 2023

      AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials

      Taken to understand the AWS estate the platform runs on

    4. 2022

      Joined White Hat Gaming

      NOC L2 Support Engineer on a 24/7 rotation

    5. 2021

      Security+, CPTE and a first security role

      Trainee analyst at Pristine InfoSolutions

    6. 2020

      Certified Information Security and Ethical Hacker

      Nmap, OWASP Top 10, IDS/IPS and network fundamentals

    7. 2019

      B.Com, Stellenbosch University

      Completed first year, then switched to cyber security

    8. 2018

      National Senior Certificate

      South African Matric

    Certifications

    Datadog Fundamentals

    Monitoring, APM and observability

    2024

    AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials

    Core AWS services and architecture

    2023

    CompTIA Security+ CE

    Security practice, cryptography, network and wireless security, standards

    2021

    Certified Penetration Testing Expert

    XSS, CSRF, SQLi, Metasploit, Burp Suite, WPA attacks

    2021

    Certified Information Security and Ethical Hacker

    IPv4/6, Nmap, OWASP Top 10, DoS/DDoS, IDS/IPS

    2020

    What I work with

    Grouped by the job each tool does, from the network edge to the incident channel.

    Edge and network

    Stopping traffic before it reaches the app

    AWS WAFJA3 / JA4Bot controlRate limitingGeo blocking

    Detect and respond

    Finding and handling what gets through

    SIEMSOARDataDogOpsGeniePhishing simsFlare

    Cloud and delivery

    Building it safely from the start

    AWSTerraformGitHubJenkinsArgoCDS3 / ECR

    Systems and teamwork

    The day-to-day

    macOSWindowsTerminalVMsJSONJiraConfluenceZendesk

    Let's talk

    [email protected]

    Based in Cape Town (UTC+2). Open to relocation, with a valid Qatar QID and NOC.

    References available on request. Off the clock: gaming, and building and tuning my own PC.