Aakash Banavathu

About Aakash Banavathu

SOC Analyst and Cyber Security Engineer with 4+ years of experience in threat detection…

Experience

1. Soc Analyst

   Morgan Stanley

   Jan 2024 — Present

   Monitored and triaged alerts in Splunk, QRadar, AWS Security Hub, and CrowdStrike Falcon using custom SPL, RegEx, and MITRE ATT & CK to reduce false positives by 30% and accelerate incident response in a regulated financial environment.• Performed IOC enrichment and threat attribution using Wireshark, Osquery, Axiom Cyber, MISP, and OSINT tools, investigated persistence (WMI, registry keys), conducted packet-level forensics, and mapped findings to MITRE and CIS controls.• Led vulnerability assessments with Nessus (CVSS, EPSS, KEV), automated CVE-CMDB enrichment via Python/Bash, improved MTTD/MTTR by 40%, and enhanced firewall policies to block C2 and lateral movement ensuring FFIEC, GLBA, and SOX compliance.• Led IT Compliance initiatives for Financial Security Infrastructure, ensuring adherence to SOX, ITGC (COBIT), FedRAMP, and DoD PA standards, conducted vendor risk assessments and Azure Government compliance reviews for secure cloud adoption.• Tuned Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (Safe Links, Safe Attachments) and DMARC/DKIM/SPF policies, reduced spear-phishing by 47% and improved BEC MTTD to 9 minutes, mapped detections to MITRE ATT & CK Investigated business email compromise using O365 audit logs, Splunk alerts, and MISP intel, automated response via Phantom to purge malicious mail and revoke access, preventing wire fraud and reducing BEC MTTR by 38%.• Built SIEM detections for email-borne threats with SPL and RegEx, enriched IOCs via VirusTotal and Emailrep, flagged DMARC failures and suspicious domains, lowering phishing false positives by 28% and meeting SOX/GLBA reporting needs.• Supervised enterprise vulnerability management operations, orchestrated patch automation via custom scripts, remediated classified/unclassified threats, and resolved electronic spillages and IA incidents across hybrid IT environments.

Education

• George Mason University

  Master's degree

• BV Raju Institute of Technology (BVRIT)

  Bachelor of Technology - BTech