Cybersecurity Engineer & Technical Specialist · Author · Human
Twenty-three years in IT. Nearly a decade in cybersecurity. One memoir about what happens when the walls you build to protect yourself become the thing that traps you. Not your average résumé.
Cybersecurity
I didn't start in cybersecurity. I started in a call center.
Over twenty-three years I worked my way through nearly every layer of IT: helpdesk, systems administration, network operations and cybersecurity. I've managed complex infrastructure and complex people. I've worked in the video game industry and the financial sector. I've held the title of individual contributor and I've led teams of security engineers. The IT world hasn't stopped moving, and neither have I.
I never went to college. I don't have a degree on the wall. What I have is two decades of real-world experience cutting through problems that textbooks don't cover, plus a track record of building things that work.
My specialty is vulnerability management. Not the checkbox kind. I'm talking about inheriting a broken program, rebuilding it from the ground up, and securing the cross-functional buy-in required to turn a massive backlog into actual remediation. I’ve designed and optimized these workflows at scale using Qualys VMDR. I know the difference between a dashboard that merely tracks exposure and a program that actively drives risk down to zero.
But beyond the technical work, I lead by a philosophy I arrived at the hard way. Something no certification ever could teach:
People first. Process second. Technology last.
Most organizations get this backwards. They invest heavily in vendor solutions and complex tooling, then wonder why the risk to the business never actually decreases and adoption stalls. A shiny dashboard cannot patch a cultural vulnerability. I invest in the people around me first: their growth, their clarity, their buy-in. Then we build the operational process that serves them. Then we evaluate what technology fits. In that order, every time.
AI is no exception. It's a genuine companion in how we work now. I use it daily, and I don't dismiss it. But too many organizations treat AI adoption as a shortcut: they lay off the workforce first and figure out the problem later, without ever having defined what the problem was. Productivity ends up tied to token usage and rising subscription costs instead of outcomes, and eventually a lot of these companies quietly rehire the people they let go. Had they led with people and process, treating AI as technology to be integrated deliberately rather than a tool to replace judgment, they'd have saved themselves millions and a lot of disruption.
Further reading:
"Employers who laid off workers for AI are reversing their decisions", CNBC
"Companies Fired Workers For AI. Now They Want Them Back", Forbes
"Companies Are Rehiring Workers They Cut for AI, and the Reason Is a Wake-Up Call for Leaders", Inc.
"Design Your Company for AI, Not AI for Your Company", BCG, on what it looks like to get this right
I believe in paying it forward. In leaving every organization better than I found it. In the idea that a security program is only as strong as the people running it, and that people perform best when someone has invested in them first.
I'm currently available for cybersecurity engineering, advisory, and technical specialist roles. Open to Helsinki capital region hybrid, European contract assignments, or US remote.
Career Journey
The Book
Every man builds a fortress. It's supposed to be temporary: a place to retreat, regroup, recover. But some men never leave. The walls become the thing that traps them.
This is a memoir about forty-six years inside. It's honest, it's dark, and it has more humor than you'd expect from someone writing about a lifetime of hiding in plain sight. It's for any man who has retreated so far inside himself that he forgot there was a world waiting on the other side.
Coming to Amazon in 2026
The Willing Prison Project
The memoir started a conversation. The Project is where that conversation goes next.
The Willing Prison Project is a developing initiative focused on men's mental health, specifically the epidemic of emotional withdrawal that leaves men present in body but absent in every way that matters.
The details are still taking shape. But the mission is clear: to reach the men sitting in their own willing prisons right now, convinced the door is locked from the outside.
It isn't.
Contact
Whether you're a hiring manager, a reader, a journalist, or just someone who needed to read something today, the door is open.
Based locally in Espoo, Finland, with full work authorization for both Finland/EU and the US. After leading a security engineering team, I'm back in the field as an individual contributor, available for hybrid roles in the Helsinki capital region, fully remote European contracts, or US remote assignments.
Also available for short-term and project-based work via Upwork.