Senior Network & Blockchain Security Leader

Sheldon Dearr - Senior Network Security & Blockchain Security Leader - available full-time

**********@*****.*** +1-305-***-**** https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheldondearr Miami, FL U.S. Citizen SUMMARY

● Over $100 billion in risks managed and more than 500,000 seats administered

● Reversed a 37% MRR client exit ahead of MegaPath/GTT's $152M acquisition - led 10 engineers through 2,000+ audits, upgrades, and cutovers in under 9 months

● 18+ years supporting C-level and business owners with technical consulting, repairs, and migrations

● 14+ years working with firewalls, SIEM and SOAR platforms, and threat intelligence systems for publicly traded companies, enterprises, MSSPs, MSPs, VARs, SMBs, and other client entities

● 14+ years researching digital assets and advising on blockchain security, compliance strategies, infrastructure solutions, product governance, and risk management

● Led, managed, or mentored 50+ personnel across NOC, SOC, and blockchain teams EXPERIENCE

Blockchain and Cybersecurity Consultant - private consulting firm (NDA), remote, January 2026-April 2026

● Provided executive research reports and act as SME on solution designs and implementation changes

● Advised directors on blockchain-specific risks, design principles, security automation, and gaps in proposed designs, feeding presentations and research documents to company AI models as knowledge transfer

● Created reports demonstrating adherence to NIST CSF, NIST 800-53, and OWASP, applying MITRE ATT&CK and MITRE AADAPT to identify gaps in a design-build solution. Processed 3 deliverables in 3 months

● Guided blockchain solution validation and vendor scheduling in IAM, DevSecOps, and security workstreams

● Educated sales engineers on tools and tactics for onchain analytics, sandboxing, and node operations

● Offered bespoke blockchain TIP (threat intel platform) solutions to augment threat intelligence offerings Ecosystem Director - CDOT Technologies (dba Omnity Network), remote, December 2024-January 2026

● Researched blockchain protocol standardization with a focus on Bitcoin and extensible VMs; build UAT, automation, and runbooks for 3 public blockchains, plus partner and pre-production data

● Managed an international team of 10 to coordinate product launches, user support, and partner engagement

● Represented Omnity by highlighting open-source Bitcoin tokenization and other blockchain offerings

● Supported IR (incident response) planning with SOPs, firewall automation, and follow-the-sun team management Senior Security Engineer - Enterprise Integration, remote, October 2023-May 2024

● Owned incident response from detection to report delivery, producing SOPs, solution briefs, and security advisories. Reduce MTTR by 8% through SOC training sessions and IT Glue knowledge base articles

● Maintained CrowdStrike and SentinelOne EDR/XDR products alongside orchestration and device management

(ConnectWise RMM), automation (CrowdStrike Falcon Fusion) and Microsoft Defender for Cloud playbooks

● Anticipated an active exploit via custom compromise indicators and alerts, engaging the attacker in real time

● Advised on technical and business edge strategies for multi-tenant customers across Palo Alto Networks (PAN), Cisco, SonicWall, and Fortinet firewall environments, including firewall lifecycle planning

● Supported client executives and engineers on major incidents using custom exploit detection and automation

● Audited client configurations of edge firewalls, EDR/XDR automation and classification, and incident response plans for undocumented risks covering over 120,000 total seats

● Hunted incidents proactively across a global MSSP environment, creating custom IOCs and SOC threshold alerts Ecosystem Development Lead - CDOT Technologies (dba Omnity Network), remote, August 2023-December 2024

● Educated developers and users on Omnity Network open-source projects and products, analyzing and tracking onchain standards and trends across multiple blockchains

● Hunted for vulnerabilities in various blockchain nodes, weak cryptography usage, and supply-chain risks

● Engaged governance, business development, and technical scoping partners to research and coordinate partnership opportunities for blockchain and AI offerings

● Represented Omnity at developer conferences and online events, acquiring 9 total LOIs from integration partners Instructor - Careerist (part time), remote, February 2023-May 2024

● Provided coaching and training for over 100 students to succeed in a B2B technology sales role

● Instructed students on B2B technology sales strategies, client relationship management, and engagement tactics for sales engineers and TAMs

● Offered mentorship, feedback, and guidance for students

● Produced briefs to cite standard IT/digital systems and architectures for channel-market positioning Interim CTO - REV3AL LLC (part time), remote, February 2023-August 2023

● Owned zero-touch deployment processes, security policy, vendor relations, key ceremonies, and SOPs

● Provided developer support to external and internal contributors to prepare a unified product suite

● Set schedules for software acquisition, security, and product development across teams

● Automated tools to calculate cloud costs from blockchain utilization and rich media scaling, saving over $20,000 Technical Product Manager - Ample Stream (part time), remote, January 2023-September 2023

● Collaborated with legal, media, UX, and technical teams on product design and implementation, including event ingestion and automation for key ceremonies, IRPs, and HSMs to support core governance functions

● Consulted on product design, MVP iteration, cost scheduling, and implementation

● Drafted SOWs, vendor risk policies, and development targets

● Transitioned to advisory role, continuing ITILv4 guidance for organizational and security planning Technical Lead - CDOT Technologies (dba Octopus Network, part time), remote, August 2021-August 2023

● Supported community members, validators and delegators with technical issues while representing Octopus Network as an engineer, multichain blockchain researcher, and public speaker

● Advised on strategic and technical partnerships, value propositions, on-prem and hybrid firewall architecture and onchain-vs-offchain trust strategy while managing the [21 member] ambassador team for go-to-market

● Maintained 250+ technical partner opportunity database, liaising between product teams and feature requests

● Coached ecosystem partners and peers on tokenization, chaos engineering, and technical concepts

● Hardened PKI with secure redirects and redefined wildcard usage policy (50% wildcard certificate reduction) Technical Lead - Charles Schwab (via Wipro Ltd.), Austin, TX, August 2020-May 2022

● Prepared SIEM, SOAR, and FireMon automation for edge and VPN controls supporting the $26B Schwab-Ameritrade merger, enriching a 15-year client relationship in a new business unit

● Approved or rejected 15-45 change requests daily in a rolling, blinded peer review

● Analyzed ITSM and change management request trends daily; compile weekly-to-annual trend and risk reports for VP/director review based on phased ITILv4 practices. Remediated 92.5% of rejected changes annually

● Attended CAB (Change Advisory Board) tri-weekly to support change escalations, review rejected changes, maintain audit evidence, and ensure reliability of reverse proxies and firewalls

● Coached and mentored 2 offshore analysts in review methodology and network scanning Security Solutions Engineer - Set Solutions Inc, Austin, TX, January 2020-August 2020

● Researched key management, SOC automation, identity protection, EDR/XDR, and redundancy solutions

● Collaborated to test/assess frameworks for a DLP anti-evasion tool, including data ingestion pipelines

● Trained across multiple firewall vendors, EDR/XDR, SIEMs, SOAR tools, TIP, elastic data lakes, and email security while tracking key VARs and market trends, monitoring AWS/Azure resource oversubscription by region

● Maintained internal firewalls and 3 VPN gateway configurations, coaching and augmenting IT staff

● Conducted knowledge transfer and sales support with 7 other security specialists across OT, HSMs, and storage

● Contributed to RFQs, RFPs, and product matrices, distilling to social media content and technical diagrams Senior Network and Security Engineer - EZCorp Inc (via Robert Half), Austin, TX, July 2019-January 2020

● Owned all levels of the network stack for EZCorp and acquired networks, including retail locations, managing PAN, Fortinet, and Cisco firewalls, switches, and appliances. Audit third-party VPN service provider

● Led emergency remediation of core/hub/egress firewalls upstream of 1,000 stub firewalls across 5 countries, supervised by CAB and C-level, reducing daily failed transactions by 85%

● Implemented cloud FortiGate firewalls with legacy colocation, PAN core, and partner clouds

● Rehabilitated InfoBlox operations and automation connectors for PAN, Microsoft Entra ID, and Fortinet products

● Interviewed, trained, and managed junior personnel while owning colocation, managed services, support SOPs, and incubated products. Train 16 support personnel in troubleshooting techniques for 20% improved MTTR

● Consulted on major projects and IT infrastructure strategy, proving cost-benefit tradeoffs (TCO, ROI) for VPN, stub site, endpoint, and environment recommendations, including ITSM + CrowdStrike + PAN SOAR strategies

● Hunted for threats in franchise and enterprise environments, report trends and APT activity to InfoSec teams Network Security Engineer and Analyst - DXC Technology (via Hortor USA), remote, February 2018-July 2019

● Facilitated cross-organization change controls for 100+ production apps/networks during a three-way M&A

● Audited and remediate security policies using Tufin, FortiManager, and Qualys, plus custom orchestration scripts in HP Network Automation (HPNA), tracked and approved by CAB, averaging 41 changes per week

● Advised on streaming applications, hardware scoping, and environment designs based on ITILv3

● Analyzed live or logged traffic to verify controls, propose SOAR rules, and document application infrastructure

● Utilize and amend ServiceNow configurations for network maps, change controls, and IT Glue cross-correlation FAE, Technical Engineer - Arrow Electronics, Austin, TX, February 2016-February 2018

● Administered PAN and Fortinet firewall evaluation programs, including SIEM integrations with Splunk, serving as Fortinet SME for partner SOC teams and pre-sales. Cross-trained 4 engineers on Fortinet firewall products

● Delivered support through investigations, RMAs, traffic analysis, VPN setup, and IR to 4000+ customers

● Assisted in development, testing, and pilot of Panorama-as-a-Service, a precursor to PAN's native Panorama SaaS offering, using syslog-ng and a Splunk cluster to trigger runbooks and reduce client MTTR

● Supported VARs as a sales engineer, scoping customer requirements against budget, priorities, and performance to offer professional services and productized solutions in EMEA and AMS Enterprise Network Security Engineer - Hewlett Packard (via Insight Global), Austin, TX, July 2015-February 2016

● Cleared war-room and SOC escalations ahead of SLA targets for FortiGate, Check Point, ASR, ASA, and Blue Coat (now Broadcom), earning the peer-given title “King of Major Incidents” for resolutions under SLA targets

● Configured, documented, and implemented an average of 35 firewall change requests weekly (SOPs, hotfixes, staged configs) supporting the HPI/HPE split with Cisco, Fortinet, Check Point tools and CLIs

● Migrated and decommissioned 200+ firewalls in a production switch fabric environment (PIM, VRRP, LLDP)

● Trained 17 engineers on FireMon, HPNA, FortiGate, FortiManager, Nmap, and internal ITSM tools Enterprise NOC Engineer Tier 3 - Megapath Networks (acquired by GTT), Austin, TX, July 2014-July 2015

● Managed egress firewalls and UTM/SIEM automation for MSSP customers while retraining a rolled-off 10-person project team, including training engineers on ServiceNow and CLEC provisioning systems

● Owned critical escalations up to P1 incidents for major incidents, pilot customers, and high-visibility issues

● Managed 5 pilot clients, coordinating with account executives to amend SOPs and solution designs

● Trained tiers one and two for more effective testing, troubleshooting, IT Glue, ITSM systems, and improved MTTR

● Troubleshot unique MPLS environments in single and multi-POP solutions with ILEC/CLEC handoffs

● Managed CMDB and production configurations of bulk Cradlepoint, Digi, and other WWAN and OT devices

● Acted as NOC supervisor or SOC escalation point outside business hours for critical alerts SKILLS

● Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Tufin, Cisco, Check Point, Splunk, FireMon, ServiceNow, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, CCPA, SOX, NIST CSF, NIST 800-53, OWASP, CCSS, Azure, AWS

● SIEM management, EDR/XDR administration and automation, SOAR, firewall management, incident response, change management, team leadership, sales engineering, cybersecurity analysis, blockchain engineering CERTIFICATIONS

● PCNSE, NSE4, CCENT; additional certifications on LinkedIn EDUCATION

● 132 college credits toward a Bachelor of Music (Electronic Music and Signal Synthesis), 2008-2012 - New World School of the Arts, a partnership of Miami Dade College and the University of Florida REFERENCES - MORE ON LINKEDIN

● Omnity Network, Octopus Network Chief Editor Suzanne Leigh

● Wipro Ltd. Delivery Assurance Senior Manager Elin Gasperik

● Set Solutions Inc CTO Michael Farnum

● EZCorp CIO Keith Robertson

● EZCorp Director of Infrastructure Brooks Borden

● Arrow Electronics ECS Director of Engineering Davitt Potter

● Arrow Electronics ECS Supervisor/Lead Ricardo Maldonado

● Hewlett Packard Enterprise (now DXC) Global Security Manager Barry Or

● Megapath Networks (now GTT) NOC Director Ben Mailey

● Megapath Networks (now GTT) NOC Supervisor Talton Walker

● AIO Solutions Enterprise Inc. Vice President Noordin Lalani

Contact this candidate