Michelle Barasa

Cyber Security Engineer with hands-on experience across endpoint security, EDR, SIEM, vulnerability management, IAM, security monitoring, application security, and DevSecOps. Experienced in deploying and supporting endpoint security controls, analyzing security telemetry, managing vulnerability remediation, implementing access-control policies, and strengthening security baselines across cloud and development environments. Hands-on experience with CrowdStrike EDR, Wazuh SIEM, Elastic/Kibana, Aikido, GitHub security, CIS Benchmarks, MITRE ATT&CK, OWASP Top 10, and security automation.

Proficient in Python, Bash, Linux, networking, and security testing, with additional experience in purple-team adversary emulation and detection engineering.

Security Engineer at CASHIA / KASHIA SERVICES LIMITED (Present)

• Supported the deployment and operation of endpoint security controls, including organization-wide CrowdStrike EDR, achieving 100% endpoint coverage and centralized threat telemetry.
• Monitored and analyzed endpoint and infrastructure security telemetry using Wazuh SIEM, Elastic/Kibana, audit logging, and webhook-based alerting.
• Led vulnerability management activities including security finding triage, risk prioritization, remediation tracking, SLA enforcement, and closure across engineering teams.
• Conducted pre-release security assessments of core products, testing authentication, authorization, access controls, and OWASP Top 10 security requirements.
• Established security baselines for cloud workloads using CIS Benchmarks, strengthening endpoint and infrastructure security posture.
• Implemented mandatory Aikido security gates across production CI/CD pipelines, blocking Critical and High-severity vulnerabilities from progressing without security review.
• Designed and documented a Security Override and Risk Acceptance Workflow with time-bound exceptions, engineering approvals, and periodic review of accepted risks.
• Authored MSBS-003: GitHub Teams Security Baseline Standard, covering access control, branch protection, secrets management, CI/CD hardening, and audit logging.
• Designed an adaptive access-control framework using RBAC and Just-In-Time privilege elevation, with automated privilege expiration to reduce persistent elevated access.
• Engineered Terraform-based synchronization between Google Workspace groups and GitHub Teams to automate access provisioning, onboarding, and offboarding.
• Developed a multi-tier SIEM/webhook logging architecture providing continuous event alerting and 180+ days of audit-log retention.
• Built an enterprise security range integrating Wazuh SIEM and Elastic Stack to capture and analyze multi-stage endpoint security telemetry.
• Executed MITRE ATT&CK adversary simulations using Atomic Red Team to evaluate endpoint detection coverage and identify monitoring gaps.
• Authored custom Sigma detection rules mapped to MITRE ATT&CK techniques, including detections for privilege escalation and lateral movement.
• Researched behavioral detection approaches for emerging AI-enabled attack techniques and prompt-injection threats.

Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Informatics and Computer Science – Strathmore University