John Ossawy

Fintech cybersecurity leader turning complex risk into practical defences, with 20 years in the industry.

Belfast, Northern Ireland - UK

LinkedIn
JO

About

Cybersecurity leader across fintech, capital markets, and technology services. Builds teams and programmes spanning application security, cloud security, vulnerability management, and incident response.

Work Experience

Signifyd
Senior Security Engineer II

2021 - Present

Senior Security Engineer → Lead Security Engineer

  • Lead security initiatives across application security, vulnerability management, cloud controls, and third-party testing.
  • Completed 246 application security design reviews using CIS, NIST, and OWASP frameworks.
  • Contributed to successful SOC 2 and PCI compliance in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Secure coding
Security Frameworks
DevSecOps integration
Container Security
API Security
Cloud Security

TPICAP
Lead Security Engineer

2019 - 2021

Cyber Security Team Lead

  • Led a 15-engineer IT Security team across EMEA and APAC, reporting to the CISO as part of the Senior Security Leadership Team.
  • Reprioritised incident response and implemented DLP controls with Azure Information Protection and Clearswift.
  • Strengthened endpoint protection, vulnerability management, SIEM, and IAM/PAM using Trend ApexOne, Qualys, Symantec MSS, and Thycotic Secret Server Cloud.
Application Security
Threat & Vulnerability Management
DevSecOps
Monitoring & SIEM Alerting
Incident Management
Cloud Security

CME Group
Cyber Security Engineer

2017 - 2019

Lead Security Engineer for CDEO

  • Led the Belfast Cyber Defense Engineering & Operations team, supporting global security operations across AMER, EMEA, and APAC.
  • Developed security policies and monitored 18 critical applications; oversaw more than 900 databases as a Data Access Management subject matter expert.
  • Reduced post-disaster-recovery check times by 40% through automation, coordinated incident response, and led a year-long technology refresh without disrupting operations.
Application Security
Data Integrity
Incident Management
Monitoring & Alerting
Threat & Vulnerability Management

Fujitsu
Senior Security Engineer

2006 - 2017

Graduate Engineer → Security Engineer II → Senior Security Engineer

  • Progressed through Fujitsu's graduate programme to Senior Security Engineer.
  • Managed endpoint security across more than 250,000 endpoints on multiple contracts.
  • Mitigated a critical WannaCry ransomware attack in the Northern Ireland Libraries network.
Network Security
Endpoint Security
Threat & Vulnerability Management
Monitoring & SIEM Alerting

Education

Queen's University Belfast

2003 - 2006
Bachelor's Degree in Business Information Technology

Belfast Met

2001 - 2003
Higher National Diploma Business Information Technology - Distinction

Projects

Fake Domain Finder

Identifies potentially fake or suspicious domains related to specific search queries.

Python
Threat Hunting

GitHub Public Repo Tracker

Fetches and analyzes repository data for a list of users.

Python
DLP

POC for TeamCity exploit

TeamCity Critical Authentication Bypass in CI/CD POC CVE-2023-42793

Python
Docker
DevSecOps