The Firewall.cx Team

Introduction

This section acknowledges the effort and the dedication of the support team behind Firewall.cx that have made it the successful site it is today. There's a brief description of the people behind the scenes and recognition of their labours.

Editorial Team

Chris Partsenidis - Founder & Senior Editor

Chris established Firewall.cx early in 2001 and since then has remained the senior editor of the website. He has the overall responsibility of the site and is in charge of the majority of the recent material that is published. He also designs and creates the graphics – a laborious task indeed (but as you have told us well worth it!).

Chris is accountable for maintaining and implementing the new features of the website that makes the material easy to read and keeps the site browser-friendly. Chris is armed with more than 8 years of experience in the IT industry and he strives to produce material that is not only accessible to all, but relevant to the networking industry and to viewers interested in this field.

After seeing the website expand and public response increase dramatically, it became apparent that a support team had to be established in order to maintain it and fulfil public demands.

Chris has a Bachelors Degree in Electrical Technology and also holds the following certifications: CCNA, MCP, CNA for Netware 3, 4, 5, DCE (D-link Certified Engineer), LCP (Linux Certified Professional), Network+ , A+ and HellasSat Certified Installer.

To read more information about Chris, please click here.

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Sahir Hidayatullah - Associate Editor & Security Advisor

Sahir joined the Firewall.cx team in 2003 as the site's Security Advisor and Forum Moderator. His contribution and expert advice to the site's forums and articles have captured everyone's attention and he has quickly become amongst the most respected people on Firewall.cx

Sahir programs in C/C++, Assembler and Perl, and had his first brush with networking 10 years ago over a 9600bps modem, connecting to local BBSs and subsequently he made network security his pet topic.

As well as working for MIEL e-Security Pvt. Ltd where he specialises in penetration-testing, Sahir assists the Mumbai Police Cyberlab. He also has his own security website: tftfotw.blogspot.com.

Sahir plans to set up a dedicated network security company to provide security consultancy, vulnerability research, auditing and incident response. In his spare time he listens to progressive rock, jazz and blues and teaches guitar in the same genres.

As well as his Bachelors Degree in Economics and other certificates, Sahir holds Cisco's latest CCNA certification.

Software Engineering Team

Kosmas Nikolaidis - Cisco Lab Senior Software Engineer

Kosmas has been involved with Firewall.cx since 2003. His invaluable assistance and 14+ years of experience in the IT sector has helped Firewall.cx stand out from the millions of IT websites around the world, by guiding the course the site has taken.

Kosmas is responsible for helping Chris maintain our PHP engine and subsystems, including the site's database, ensuring everything runs smoothly.

As a Senior Software Engineer, Kosmas is responsible for the ongoing development of our site's Cisco Lab. At the same time, he ensures our site's partnerships are kept strong and healthy by managing the main Firewall.cx communication channel.

Kosmas hobby is mainly programming, using .NET, Java and Web Scripting technologies, while he also enjoys teaching students general programming languages, networking and the ECDL (Microsoft Office) course as an ECDL instructor.

Lastly, Kosmas has recently extended his knowledge by obtaining Cisco's Certified Sales Associate (CSA) and HP's Accredited Sales Professional (ASP) certifications.

George Thaniotis - Cisco Lab Software Engineer

George joined the Firewall.cx team in early 2004 undertaking recently the complex task of assisting Kosma in the development of our new Cisco Lab engine.

George's experience extends from Web development and .NET to Java programming and database development.

George currently works as a Senior Software Engineer at one of Greece's largest online hoiday booking services and is also an ECDL (Microsoft Office) instructor.

In addition to all his work experience, he has a B.S in Computer Information Systems (CIS) from DeVry University, an Associate Degree in Web Development and is MCP certified in Microsoft Visual Basic.

Jeremy Stretch - Cisco Lab Software Engineer

Jeremy joined the Firewall.cx team in April 2006 to help with the development of our site's prominent Cisco Lab. His outstanding contribution, commitment & impressive programming skills made him an invaluable team member.

Jeremy graduated high school in 2003 and, soon after, enlisted in the United States Air Force. He's balanced his time over the last three years between maintaining enterprise networks at work and tinkering with his own projects at home. These include: his website ( http://www.l0gic.net ); an autonomous live CD; a full CMS written in PHP; and several other side projects.

Jeremy is experienced with web design and administration, but his main interests focus on network security. Impressively, all three of his computers at home run Gentoo Linux. He plans to revive his expired CCNA in the near future, hopefully followed by a CCNP.

Forum Moderators

Alan Drury (TheBishop) - Forum Moderator

Alan discovered Firewall.cx in early 2004 and has spent much time answering members’ questions on the forums and as a beta tester for our Cisco lab.

Having become hooked on electronics at an early age, Alan filled a mis-spent youth with a variety of projects including the construction of large PA systems, amateur radio transmitters, programmable stage lighting controllers and setting fire to the bedroom carpet (twice).

This led inevitably to an HND in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and four and a half years as a Transmitter Engineer with the BBC. From there he defected into Technical Authorship where he found himself explaining the intricacies of Ethernet, client-server applications and large network installations to a varied audience. Reasoning that if he could document it then he could do it, he switched careers again and landed a network engineering post at the UK's National Exhibition Centre. The rest, as they say, is history, and Alan currently works for a large multinational company supporting a complex national network.

Alan brings to Firewall.cx a wealth of practical experience and an engineering background that informs and illuminates across a variety of topics. In his spare time Alan enjoys hot and spicy food of all kinds, particularly Indian dishes, and has an insatiable appetite for Chris's olives. He is writing a series of novels, loves to listen to music and is an active member of his local church. One of these days he hopes to get round to doing his CCNA...

Wayne Murphy (Smurf) - Forum Moderator

Wayne graduated from Teeside University in Middlesbrough in 1997 with a degree in Computer Science. He has obtained an MCSE in Windows NT/2000/2003, CCNA, CCSP, CISSP, CEH, CWSE+ and is currently working towards his CCNP certification.

Initially, Wayne practised within the Microsoft arena but in the last 3 years he has extended to network security and network infrastructure. He says "I have recently begun working within the Security/Network arena and I am still enjoying the learning curve.  The Security arena fascinates me and I really enjoy the new challenges this is bringing to my career."

Recently, Wayne completed successfully his CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) making him the only team member with this qualification!

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Dele Oyebande (Dalight) - Forum Moderator

Dele has had almost 15 years’ experience in the specification and development of ERP (Enterprise, Resource and Planning) systems. He combines that with a keen interest in networking and security issues as well as an unnatural enthusiasm for Open Source Software!

He is a qualified Electrical Engineer with expertise in the area of condition monitoring and the design of computer-controlled test equipment for use in manufacturing industry.

He is currently involved in projects utilizing content management systems to provide solutions for businesses.

Dele holds a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering.

Nikitas Skembris (Nske) - Forum Moderator

Nikita, joined the Firewall.cx Team in 2006 and is currently a student in Athens studying Political Science and History. However, despite his line of studies, Nikita's interest in computers arose in the mid nineties. Since then, his experience grew due to his envolvement in several community based projects on networking and security.

His knowledge of administration on Unix-like operating systems and related issues, as well as coding, is extensive and keeps growing. Like many, Nikita's knowledge has grown from experience rather than certifications, though this doesn't rule out the possibility of obtaining a degree in computer science.

Currently, Nikita works as a network administrator in an internet café, which aids in purchasing equipment for his expensive hobby and aims to conquer his CCNA certification in the near future!

John Watters (Rockape) - Forum Moderator

John has been a member of the Firewall.cx family since 2004. Typically you’ll find him inside the site’s forums, ensuring everything is running smoothly and people are not misbehaving :)

John works for an I.T. firm as a Network support engineer, however, his job also encompasses desktop support, certain software support and everything else the Unix and Oracle Teams don’t do.

To help prove John does have a life (unline most of us!), is also a Civilian Instructor with the Air Training Corp and is the Chairman of the Parent/Teachers Association of his son’s (Isaac) School.

Ammar Muqaddas (S0lo) - Forum Moderator

Ammar has been a member of the Firewall.cx community since 2006 and accepted Firewall.cx's invitation to join the Site's Team in 2008 as a Forum Moderator. Ammar holds a Bachelor's Degree and Master's Degree in Computer Engineering from Kuwait University, where he currently works as a Systems Administrator.

Ammar also currently holds the CCNA certification and is the only CCNA Instructor amongst our site's Team members!

Apart from his working skills, he's very familiar with programming using Visual Basic and C/C++, Java and is currently conquering PHP and MySQL. Lastly, Ammar has created a number of applications including DiskSims (Master's degree project), Hegons (Heterogeneous Grooming Optical Network Simulator), GAVec ( A Genetic Algorithm based Automatic Pattern Test Generation tool) and much more. All these, plus a lot more, can be found on his personal website: http://www.solostuff.net

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Harry Mylonadis (The_Berzerker) - Forum Moderator

Born in 1982 in Athens, Greece he recently moved to the UK in order to pursue an MSc in Information Systems Management at Brunel university. His experience with computers began when he was 10 years old and started programming in Basic, Pascal etc. During High school he became interested in PC Hardware and started offering PC support to anyone that wanted help.

Harry's qualifications are a BSc in Information Systems Engineering from TEI of Piraeus and Cisco's CCNA. He is currently working on an MSc in Information Systems Management.

Harry has also worked as a Network Engineer for ATHENS 2004, offering network services to critical applications and network backbones created specifically for the Olympic Games 2004.

His goals are to obtain the MSc and work as either an IT Consultant or a Business Analyst and, in the far future, maybe open his own consulting firm.

We also can't forget to mention that Harry is a Mac enthusiast and uses only Mac computers in his everyday life. According to Harry.... anything that can be done on a PC can be done on a Mac ;-)

Systems Engineers

Emmanouil Partsenidis – Systems Engineer

Emmanouil's role as a Systems Engineer for our site and Cisco lab servers has proven to be a key-role in helping us maintain all services provided to our community.

His responsibilities include daily check of all Internet services (www, mail, dns e.t.c) to ensure they are up and running without problems, while at the same time monitoring our Cisco lab network and Firewall activity.

Emmanouil's contribution to our site's Cisco lab has been enormous. He helped with the original lab design, including the VLANs that needed to be carefully designed to ensure that every Cisco lab remained logically separated from each other, while allowing them to use services such as DNS, TFTP and FTP, provided by our main Cisco lab server.

Emmanouil graduated in 2003 from City University, London, where he obtained his degree in Computer Systems Engineering. In addition, Emmanouil holds the Comptia A+ and Network + certifications and is now working towards his Cisco CCNA certification.

His work experience includes working for one of UK 's largest computer firms such as Dixons and PC World as a Senior Systems Engineer.

News Editor

Jack Burgess - News Editor

Jack joined our team in late 2004 and is no stranger to the world of computers. His first encounter was back in 1983 when he started out with a 286-8MHz PC with 1 Meg of Ram and DOS 2.1.

Since then, he has dealt extensively with various Operating Systems and has obtained qualifications in Computer Science and in Networking.

He was employed as a computer technician for companies such as Apple Computers and Symantec, though now runs his own business located at www.idahojack.com. When he is not preoccupied with work, he enjoys spending time working with shortwave radios and scanners and is a licensed HAM operator.

His interest in this area has led him to currently work on a website dedicated
to HAM radio. Although he likewise enjoys outdoor activities like
Four-Wheel-driving and photography.

Jack joined the Firewall.cx team early 2004 as a Forum Moderator, supporting our members and visitors with their complex problems and questions! In 2006, Jack undertook the responsibilities of the site's News Editor, ensuring we all stay up-to-date with the latest IT news from around the world.

Technical Editors

Jil Swinnerton - 1st Technical Editor

'Jils' (aka dictionary) has been part of Firewall.cx from the beginning. She's our first Technical Editor and undertakes the task of seeing that the material is published in a form of the English language that is comprehensible to all!

For those who remember the early days of the IT industry, you may recall the complexity of computer terminology before it became a part of life. To add to the confusion, Jil also has the difficult task of deciphering Chris's and Sahir's language, one that is unknown to the human species!

Once a subject is thoroughly researched and documented, Jil endeavours to correct the spelling, grammar and formatting. This process is not always smooth when Chris takes the initiative to publish updated material without showing it to Jil.

Chris always concedes on points of English grammar, however. Jil also designed our Firewall.cx logo and helps Chris with the graphics that can be seen throughout the site.

Katerina Stratilas - 2nd Technical Editor and Public Relations Coordinator

Katerina is our public relations coordinator and our second Technical Editor.

She deals with a large proportion of the correspondence and maintains good relations amongst our advertisers and associate companies.

Like Jil, Katerina has been a part of Firewall.cx from the beginning and, as a result, has provided valuable input to the development of the website.

Katerina holds a Bachelor of Arts and Diploma in Education (English, Japanese, Chinese and Greek), along with a Masters Degree in TESOL. For those wondering, no, she hasn't got any IT Certifications :)