Ben Vaughan

Ben Vaughan

Maker of Things That Make Things

Nexient

Biography

My name is Ben Vaughan and I work to improve the lives of teams who run software in production.

I am a professional leader who is skilled in creating positive, process-oriented, secure, and performant DevSecOps teams who understand that DevOps is a philosophy, not a job description. I am deeply committed to the idea that Good Process leads to Good Results.

I have worked in a wide range of industries, from Higher Education to FinTech to eCommerce and I have brought stability and balance to burned-out Ops teams through the introduction and enforcement of good processes, standards, openness, and teamwork.

I am passionate about security, automation, incident response, observability tools, and the idea that good policy drives good process which delivers good outcomes.

Interests

  • DevSecOps
  • Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery
  • Application Observability
  • Incident Response

Education

  • BS Computer Science, 2001

    Iowa State University

Skills

Tactical Leadership

Team Leadership and Operational Effectiveness

Mentoring

Teaching and Growing Teams

Information Security

Detection and Measured Response

Linux DevSecOps

Incident Response

Monitoring and Metrics

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Digital Operations Management Practice Lead

Capgemini

Oct 2014 – Present Illinois

Responsibilities include:

  • Technical and Process Leadership
  • Application Performance Observability
  • Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery
  • Information Security
 
 
 
 
 

Electronic Trading Infrastructure Support Manager

Newedge / Societe Generale

Jan 2008 – Oct 2014 Illinois
Responsible for the architecture and deployment of a global electronic trading infrastructure that supported low latency access to worldwide markets.
 
 
 
 
 

Server Systems Administrator

Iowa State University

Sep 1997 – Jul 2007 Iowa
Responsible for Windows and Linux systems administration. Lead efforts to integrate login and file sharing services between the two platforms.

Recent Posts

Incident Response OODA

Digital Operations Incident Response It’s 2am. You’re sound asleep dreaming of marshmallow clouds, taco cats, and rainbow unicorns. Suddenly, your pleasant dreams are shattered by the piercing notes of your phone’s alert tone.

No Sysadmin Required

No SysAdmin Required * Reach back into your memory (or Wikipedia article) to Thursday, January 1st, 1970. The world of computing consisted only of a few large, expensive computers that varied widely in capability and implementation.