ABOUT ME

Frank Ramirez is an Enterprise Security Architect with experience in the sectors of Finance and Hospitality. He is affiliated to Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida; he holds a BS. in Computer Science and advanced certifications in Cybersecurity Strategy, Vulnerability Management, and Compliance. Frank led the Vulnerability Assessment team at Citi for six years. Frank follows SANS, The Open Group, PCI DSS, and NIST. Frank speaks English, Spanish and he's improving in Italian.

BIO

Frank Ramirez started his career in Information Technology and CyberSecurity in 1999.

Early in his career, as a second-year full-time student at the University of Lima, Frank participated in the University's website's revamp project. Followed by an internship at VOLVO as an I.T. analyst, he developed enhancements for the invoicing and accounting systems. Frank was invited for an internship at IBM, as a member of the Software Group and as a software specialist, where he had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with many IBM business partners.
Upon graduation, Frank managed and administered the IBM Business Partner Innovation Center (BPIC); he also was an evangelist of the IBM software portfolio and presenter of Proofs of Concept to Business Partners and prospective clients.
In 2005, Frank started as IBM Product Manager at System Support and Services, managing software sales, licensing, and architecting IBM, CA, Oracle, and Symantec solutions, and providing the firm's implementation services.

In 2007, Frank started his CyberSecurity journey and joined the financial sector for the next 10 years.
He tenured as System Administrator at Pacific National Bank; Data Security Officer at Ocean Bank; and as V.P. and Team Lead of Cyber Security at CITIBANK.
At Pacific National Bank, Frank established a cadence for application vulnerability scanning; he also generated significant cost savings through virtualization, reducing the infrastructure cost by 45%.
At Ocean Bank, Frank guided and executed key initiatives to improve Cyber Security. Focusing on new I.T. Projects, the transactional engine running on AS400, the supporting Microsoft Infrastructure, the communication services, and securing critical information narrowed the breach to achieve SOX compliance, obtaining positive FDIC audit results.
At Citibank, Frank joined the CyberSecurity team as a V.P. He led a team of skilled cybersecurity engineers, managed the assessment engagements and team's workload, mentored new members in offensive security, and enhanced the cybersecurity process and methodology. Also, achieved a 30% reduction of the team's backlog.
In 2016, Frank joined the hospitality sector leading Security Architecture at Royal Caribbean Cruises across its digital transformation portfolio, creating new security patterns and becoming an enabler of new security capabilities, pursuing security compliance with PCI and GDPR, therefore enhancing the enterprise security posture.

During this time, Frank developed his passion for Cyber Security and Enterprise Architecture, leading and sharing his experience with Executives, Directors, Engineering Leads, and team members, selling his vision to enhance the organizations' security posture and safeguard their own's and their customers' information.

Frank holds various certifications from SANS GIAC, ISC2, PCI DSS, The Open Group, PMI, EC-Council, AWS, and Microsoft: