Jacques van Zijl

Cyber Security Engineering Lead @微软

Calgary, AB, CA

As Cyber Security Engineering Lead for Higher Education, Healthcare and Government at Microsoft Canada, I help research institutions strengthen their security posture across protect, detect, and respond using the Microsoft security ecosystem. My focus is safeguarding identity, endpoints, cloud workloads, and sensitive data while enabling secure collaboration and innovation at scale.With nearly two decades of cybersecurity experience, I combine hands-on engineering with strategic leadership, partnering with CIOs, CISOs, security teams, and academic stakeholders to design and operationalize security architectures across Azure, Microsoft 365, hybrid, and on-premises environments, aligned to Canadian regulatory and data-residency requirements.A core area of my work is Azure cloud security and identity protection using Microsoft Entra, reducing identity-based attack paths through strong authentication, conditional access, and least-privilege design. In parallel, I help institutions maximize Microsoft endpoint protection across Windows, macOS, and Linux—leveraging E3 and E5 capabilities to improve hardening, attack surface reduction, and behavioral detection.I lead red, blue, and purple team exercises to validate defenses under realistic attack conditions. This includes adversary emulation using Atomic Red Canary techniques mapped to MITRE ATT & CK, detection engineering, and response validation across Defender, XDR, and Sentinel. These exercises expose detection gaps, improve alert quality, and strengthen incident response readiness.My work bridges security research, engineering, and operations—translating real-world attack simulation into practical mitigations that protect intellectual property, research data, and student systems, while helping institutions build resilient, evidence-driven security programs

INTEC COLLAGE

Bachelor's degree, Computer and Information Systems Security/Information Assurance

Ferrum

12, History, Maths, English, Economics, PT