Hi, my name is Ahmed. I am currently working in Microsoft Australia as a security research lead. My day to day work involves leading an awesome team working on Microsoft Defender and researching Attacker behaviour.

Previously I worked at Crowdstrike leading the MDR team in the APJ region. I was the second person to join the team and grew the team from 2 - 45. At one time I had more than 20 people reporting to me 😅. I love team building and setting them up for success.

Crowdstrike was not my first experience setting up a team. Before moving to Australia in 2018 I was working in UAE in NCR Corporation which is financial services provider. I was the first person hired in the professional services team in 2009 and I build the team from scratch there as well.

I like setting up teams so I can instill the culture of the workplace in team, make sure they bond well and look after one another. Nothing gives me more joy than to see my team member/s do well. The trick is to always hire people better than yourself.

In terms of my technical expertise I have worked in Incident Response, Malware Analysis, Security Research and most recently personally working on Malware/C2 Development.

In my career I have interacted with C-Suite representative’s of customers, discussed our solutions with them in a technical and presales capacity. Represented my team and company in external marketing and roadshow events.