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EIEnes Ismaili
About

I have sat on both sides of the report.

Eighteen years of running systems, and more than eight of breaking them on purpose. The combination is the point: findings that are technically real and operationally fixable.

EI
Based
Skopje, North Macedonia
Timezone
CET (UTC+1)
Now
SOC Engineer, Cosmic Development
Also
Official Wazuh Ambassador
01Background

I started in 2008 as a system administrator, looking after Active Directory, Windows Server and the network for every department of a municipality.

That job taught me how systems actually fail. Almost never with a dramatic exploit. Usually with a permission nobody reviewed, a service nobody owned, or a backup nobody had restored. That instinct has shaped every report I have written since.

I moved into offensive work in 2013 and stayed there. Freelance web and WordPress testing, then Linux administration and shared-hosting pentests at MKHOST, application and API security at Thor IT Solutions, and SIEM engineering for DSS, a New York MSSP. Today I secure the production platform behind Rumble.com, its CDN, Locals.com and Rumble Cloud. I reproduce and score bug bounty submissions, run Wazuh detection, and verify that fixes actually hold.

Somewhere in between I became an Official Wazuh Ambassador, published findings against open-source bug bounty software and widely used WordPress plugins, and built vulnerable labs that other people use to practise.

The thread through all of it is verification. A finding is not real until it is reproduced. A fix is not real until it is retested. That is the standard I hold my own work to, and the standard I would want applied to mine.

Penetration testingAppSecAPI securityWazuhCloud securityNIST 800-53HIPAAPCI DSS
What I bring

Three things that usually matter.

01

Offensive depth

Manual web, API and network testing across PHP, .NET, JavaScript and GraphQL stacks, with the source-reading ability to confirm root cause instead of guessing.

02

Detection engineering

Wazuh built, tuned and operated in production: ingestion, decoders, correlation rules, FIM and the triage workflow that keeps alerts worth reading.

03

Operational empathy

I have been the administrator who has to apply the fix at 2am. Recommendations are written for the person who has to implement them, not for a slide.

02Experience

The record.

Roles, not job descriptions. Each line is something I ran, tested or fixed in production.

SOC Engineer

Jun 2026 to present

Cosmic Development, dedicated to Rumble.com, its CDN, Locals.com and Rumble Cloud

  • Run Wazuh SIEM monitoring, log analysis and alerting for a high-traffic production platform and its supporting infrastructure.
  • Primary validator and triager of the public bug bounty program: reproduce submissions, assign CVSS scores, escalate to engineering and verify fixes.
  • Own Zabbix monitoring and triage its alerts, separating real infrastructure issues from test-environment noise.

Cyber Security Consultant

Mar 2026 to Aug 2026

Qubitronix, contract, US-based firm, remote

  • Delivered a HIPAA, PCI DSS and NIST SP 800-53 hardening plan for a GCP-hosted Wazuh deployment: RBAC, GCP IAP-based MFA and network lockdown.
  • Produced the report, control checklist and admin walkthrough, and supported secure handling of credentials and client data under strict confidentiality.

SIEM Engineer

2025 to 2026

DSS, New York based managed security service provider

  • Designed and deployed Wazuh SIEM from the ground up: architecture, data sources and compliance-driven tuning.
  • Managed log ingestion from endpoints, network devices, cloud services and applications, and wrote and tuned correlation rules and alerts.
  • Took part in incident response, built dashboards and reports, and troubleshot ingestion failures, performance issues and false positives.

Penetration Tester / Security Analyst

2023 to 2025

Thor IT Solutions

  • Network and web application penetration tests to OWASP methodology, including manual testing of GraphQL APIs, Swagger/OpenAPI services and .NET applications: introspection abuse, BOLA, mass assignment and injection.
  • Integrated security testing into Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines and delivered reports with CVSS scores, PoC steps and remediation roadmaps for technical and executive audiences.

Linux Administrator & Web Penetration Tester

2021 to 2022

MKHOST, hosting provider

  • Administered Linux servers behind the hosting infrastructure: hardening, service configuration, user permissions and ongoing maintenance of web-hosting environments.
  • Pentested company PHP and WordPress applications and client sites on shared hosting: plugin and theme vulnerabilities, authentication bypass, insecure file upload, privilege escalation and misconfiguration.
  • Reviewed PHP source code and worked with developers to validate remediation.

Freelance Penetration Tester

2013 to 2025

Independent

  • Web application and WordPress penetration tests across industries, with detailed reports.
  • WordPress hardening: plugin and theme audits, file permissions, login protection and WAF configuration.

System Administrator & Penetration Tester

2008 to 2017

Municipality of Cair

  • Administered Active Directory (GPO, OU structure, RBAC), Windows Server, network configuration and endpoint security for all municipal departments.
  • Pentested internal web applications and supported the security of departmental infrastructure.
03Credentials

Training and community.

Training

  • Azure Administrator (AZ-104) course at Semos Education
  • Practical Bug Bounty, TCM Security
  • PNPT preparation course, TCM Security

Community

  • Official Wazuh Ambassador
  • Wordfence bug bounty contributor
  • Vulnerable-lab author for the security community

Education

  • Bachelor's Degree, Computer Science / Information Systems, North Macedonia
LanguagesAlbanianNativeMacedonianFluentEnglishProfessional
Working together

Let's see if the fit is right.

A short call, an honest answer about whether I can help, and a written scope if I can. No discovery-call theatre.

Typically replies within one business day. NDA on request.

enes.ismaili@gmail.com