Gangesh Vats

Senior Cloud and Platform Security Engineer with 20+ years of experience across Security Engineering, Cloud Security, Platform Security, DevSecOps, and Enterprise Infrastructure, including 8+ years securing cloud-native platforms and engineering ecosystems. Experienced in secure-by-design AWS platforms, policy-as-code guardrails, GitOps, Terraform/IaC, automated security controls, AWS WAF, security observability, vulnerability management, secrets management, and cloud governance. Certified AI Security Professional (CAISP) with practical exposure to AI security concepts including LLM risks, prompt injection, sensitive data exposure, AI supply chain security, SBOMs, model signing, vulnerability scanning, threat modeling, OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications, MITRE ATLAS, and AI risk management frameworks.

Actively leverage AI-powered engineering tools such as Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Lovable, and agentic workflows to accelerate documentation, design reviews, troubleshooting, and engineering productivity. Proven ability to deliver security solutions across cloud, platform, DevSecOps, and emerging AI security initiatives while balancing risk reduction, compliance requirements, and engineering velocity.

Senior Security Engineer - McKinsey & Company - Gurugram, India

(2017-07)

Lead secure-by-design cloud security, DevSecOps, policy-as-code, and platform security initiatives adopted across global engineering teams, partnering with Security Architecture, AppSec, SRE, DevOps, Red Team, Product Security, and Platform Engineering.

• Designed and built the Integrated Deploy & Verify Process (IDVP), a GitOps-based security validation framework embedding preventive and detective controls into Terraform pipelines across AWS patterns including EC2, Aurora PostgreSQL, Secrets Manager, KMS, and ALB.
• Improved pre-deployment validation coverage, identifying and remediating 30+ security misconfigurations and 10+ functional gaps before production deployment.
• Authored and operationalized Technical Security Standards (TSS) for core AWS services, defining scalable secure-by-design guardrails aligned with compliance, governance, and risk objectives.
• Developed custom Wiz Cloud Configuration Rules and automation to enforce proactive controls, including IAM-only access to AWS Secrets Manager and EC2 ENI restriction policies.
• Led AWS WAF onboarding and governance improvements; built Splunk and Cloudflare dashboards for WAF events, attack indicators, and traffic patterns, reducing investigation effort by approximately 30%.
• Optimized Product Security Review workflows and backend integrations, reducing manual review effort by approximately 40% while improving developer and reviewer experience.
• Enabled penetration testing and Red Team operations through ephemeral IaC-based environments and automated connectivity validation, reducing operational overhead and engagement lead time.
• Created and published MCP Security Guardrails, a reusable Cursor-based agentic AI skill in the enterprise AI catalogue to help engineers review MCP server configurations, OAuth/authorization integrations, token handling, transport security, TLS, encryption, and MCP security design.
• Developed Vault Knowbot, an AI-assisted engineering skill supporting One Firm Vault, HashiCorp Vault, EPAPI Vault modules, PMcK workflows, runbooks, infrastructure repositories, and troubleshooting scenarios to reduce dependency on tribal knowledge.
• Applied AI-assisted engineering practices using Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Lovable, and agentic workflows to improve documentation, design reviews, troubleshooting, security analysis, and engineering productivity.
• Completed CAISP hands-on labs covering prompt injection, sensitive information exposure, AI supply chain risks, model scanning, model signing, SBOM generation, vulnerability scanning, threat modeling, and LLM evaluation.

Senior Technology Engineer - McKinsey & Company - Gurugram, India

(2010-05 - 2017-06)

• Managed enterprise messaging and archiving platforms including Office 365, Lotus Domino, and ZL Archiving supporting compliance, retention, and e-discovery requirements.
• Automated operational workflows using Python, Shell scripting, Ansible, and GitHub, reducing manual effort and improving reliability of recurring platform tasks.
• Led proof-of-concepts for AWS vulnerability scanning and DAST assessment platforms supporting cloud security and vulnerability management initiatives.
• Built automated test environments using Terraform and Ansible to enable repeatable validation of infrastructure, security tooling, and platform configurations.
• Improved infrastructure security posture through remediation of messaging, platform, and infrastructure vulnerabilities aligned with audit and compliance requirements.

Senior Operations Lead Specialist - IBM India - Noida, India

(2008-09 - 2010-05)

• Led operations and stability initiatives for enterprise infrastructure services, ensuring SLA adherence and operational excellence.

Senior Lotus Domino Administrator - PCS Technology Ltd. - Delhi, India

(2008-02 - 2008-09)

Customer Support Engineer - Accel Frontline Ltd. - Delhi, India

(2006-09 - 2008-03)

MBA - Project Management - Sikkim Manipal University (SMU) (2012)

Bachelor of Engineering - Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering - Institution of Electronics & Telecommunication Engineers (IETE) (2005)

Diploma - Electronics & Communication Engineering - Board of Technical Education, Delhi