Tim's first year as a Security Consultant at Ordina

Last year around July, I was looking for a job and Ordina caught my eye. Especially its security area looked very interesting, so I scheduled a meeting to see if Ordina would be a good fit for me and if the team would be interested in me.

To my delight, I had a very enjoyable initial meeting with Anne-Mie, the Security Area HR Business Partner. And the second interview with Emmanouil Perselis, the Red Teaming Competence Lead, sparked my desire to work in the team even more. Thus, I was very happy to hear that I could start working for Ordina in September.

Young Professional Program

My Ordina life started on 1th September from the Young Professional Program (YPP). This was a 7-week training program that Ordina organized for all junior starters (70 in total! & 5 for Security). During this program, I learned about consulting services that Ordina offers and the clients it works with. There were also interesting soft-skill trainings where I learned a lot about my character and how I can be a good consultant.

Most of these sessions were security specific and given by Senior Security Consultants. These were really valuable for me since it allowed us to get to know most of the team members in a friendly way. They are after all my colleagues.

My first client

Before the YPP was entirely over, Anne-Mie notified me that I was proposed and accepted at a large Belgian bank as an IAM Security Analyst. Thanks to the YPP, I felt ready and I was excited to start working there as of beginning of October.

At this client, I worked in the internal IT team at the HQ, and I was responsible for analyzing its Active Directory system in terms of IAM security. These reports were then given to the change management team and the managers so that the issues could be resolved. I also assisted to automate many tasks that were previously done differently.

Penetration testing

My skills and ambitions lie more toward the red teaming part of security. One of the reasons I chose Ordina is because they are also in the business of penetration testing. As such, I am very happy that I was already able to perform multiple successful (web) penetration tests for a client in the financial sector. I also believe that we can provide penetration tests of excellent quality since there are a lot of experts in our team and we can always rely on each other’s expertise.

Self-Development & Future

Something I find very important is self-development. Luckily Ordina makes great efforts towards this as well. During the YPP, we were given time to study for CompTIA Security+ certification, this was a nice introduction to have as a security consultant. Following this, I achieved my first red teaming certificate, eWPT (Web Penetration Tester), and recently I also obtained the ‘eXtreme’ version, eWPTXv2. These certifications improved my confidence as a Pentester. I am grateful that Ordina provides the necessary resources and time, to study and have the exam.

My first project came to an end and I expect to start a new challenge soon. Many of Ordina’s clients especially financial institutions and multinational companies provide modern, fascinating work environments and I can’t wait to start helping them improve their security posture.

If you are interested in working for Ordina or would like to know more about our services for your company, don’t hesitate to contact us.