Alec Gray

Alec Gray

IT & Security Manager

I'm passionate about IT, business and using technology to find innovative solutions for long-standing issues, to enable organisations to grow and operate as efficiently as possible. I have spent the past 10 years working in the IT trade, most recently managing the IT department at a multi-million pound revenue servicing and distribution company that is a leader in the meat industry.

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My current role involves advising senior management on organisation-wide policy changes and system upgrades, and leading the projects that are deemed to be the highest priority. Most recently, I was the technical lead for upgrading from Dynamics Nav 2009 on-premise to Business Central SaaS. Using the knowledge gained from my OSCP certification, I have taken charge of data security and implemented security best practices, quickly attaining CyberEssentials compliancy and then going further in the areas that I found to be lacking. On top of this, I built an ELK SIEM system to gain visibility and retention of logs across the organisation and entered into a partnership with Darktrace. This also led me to grow the IT department, managing a team of two, ensuring the IT department remained to be seen as an easily accessible, helpful, and vital part of the organisation.

Originally joining Interfood as an IT Administrator / Systems Administrator, I was responsible for handling end-user issues, minimising downtime to core systems and in charge of upgrading and implementing new systems. With the growth of the company, the IT network grew too and resulted in hiring another member of IT staff and being promoted to management.

After initially beginning part time, I joined Soundbyte Response as a full time Workshop Engineer upon completing my A Levels. This role involved working with residential and commercial customers to repair software and hardware faults on their devices. After a year, I was promoted to Onsite/Helpdesk Engineer, where I acted as the point of contact for commercial customers to resolve day-to-day operational issues either remotely or by visiting their site when required. This exposed me to multiple server operating systems, backup systems, cloud and on-premises network configurations as well as learning the importance of clear and precise communication when speaking to stakeholders at different management levels.