Curriculum Vitae

Personal data

Name: Risto Vaarandi
Nationality: Estonian
Date and place of birth: September 18, 1972, Tallinn, Estonia
Languages: Estonian (native), English (fluent), Russian (passive), Finnish (passive)
Office address: Akadeemia tee 15A, Tallinn, Estonia
E-mail: firstname d0t lastname at gmail d0t c0m

Academic degrees

PhD in Computer Engineering, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, 2005
MSc in Computer Science, University of Tartu, Estonia, 1997

Education

2000-2005 PhD student of Computer Engineering, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
1994-1997 MSc student of Computer Science, University of Tartu, Estonia
1990-1994 undergraduate student of Computer Science, University of Tartu, Estonia
1979-1990 High School No. 21 of Tallinn, Estonia

Career

Since October 2024 Tallinn University of Technology, associate professor
Research on security monitoring, event log analysis, and other aspects of cyber security; supervision of graduate students and teaching activities.
January 2015 - October 2024 Tallinn University of Technology, senior researcher
Research on event correlation, event log data mining, and security monitoring; supervision of graduate students and teaching activities.
May 2006 - December 2014 NATO CCDCOE, researcher
Research on security monitoring techniques and various teaching activities.
April 1998 - July 2018 SEB Estonia, IT development engineer
Development and maintenance of a system and network management framework (based on HP OpenView and a number of open source tools) which included solutions for monitoring applications, servers, network devices, etc.; for event correlation and event log monitoring; for gathering SNMP and NetFlow statistics from servers, routers, and probes; for intrusion detection; etc.
March 1997 - April 1998 Estpak Data Ltd., network administrator
Administration of Cisco and Bay Networks routers, development and maintenance of a network management system (based on Tivoli NetView), administration of UNIX servers (Linux and AIX)
August 1994 - March 1997 Tartu County Government, IT specialist
Administration of UNIX servers (Linux and AIX), PC-workstation maintenance and user support

Research interests

Event correlation in monitoring and management systems
Data mining algorithms for analyzing event logs
Network management and intrusion detection
System and application monitoring techniques

Publications

See https://ristov.github.io/publ.html

Supervised PhD students

Mauno Pihelgas. Automating Defences against Cyber Operations in Computer Networks. PhD thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2021
Bernhards Blumbergs. Specialized Cyber Red Team Responsive Computer Network Operations. PhD thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2019

Supervised MSc students

Mark Borissov. Deploying open-source SIEM system for Waldur-based services at the University of Tartu. Master thesis, University of Tartu, 2024
Giorgi Okroshidze. Comparison of SOC Workflow Automation Options for SMEs and Practical Impact Analysis. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2024
Frank Korving. DACA: Automated Attack Scenarios and Dataset Generation. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2022
Orkhan Gasimov. Compare and Contrast Analysis of Log Parsing Algorithms: Perspective of Efficiency and Pattern Detection Rate. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2022
Ilker Furkan Kahyalar. A Comparative Study of Virtualization Solutions for Cybersecurity Labs. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2021
Tarvo Arikas. Streaming event correlation and complex event processing using open-source solutions. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2021
Ali Ghasempour. HTTP Based Network Intrusion Detection System by Using Machine Learning Based Classifier. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2021
Siim Sarv. Using Event Correlation to Detect Security Incidents from Windows Workstations. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2021
Ivo Pure. An automated methodology for validating web related cyber threat intelligence by implementing a honeyclient. Master thesis, University of Tartu, 2019
Sander Arnus. Providing Reliable Log Delivery and Integrity of Logs. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2017
Chen Zhuge. C-Based Implementation of LogCluster, a Data Clustering and Pattern Mining Algorithm for Event Logs. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2016
Mina Gerges. Log Monitoring and Event Correlation on Microsoft Windows Using Simple Event Correlator. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2016
Sergei Komarov. Choosing Open-source Flow-based Network Monitoring Solution. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2015
Sven Petai. Detecting Anomalies in System Logs. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2014
Markus Kont. Event management and active defense framework for small companies. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2014
Faris Aloul. A Study of Client Honeypots and Applying Them to Social Networking Sites. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2013
Artyom Churilin. Choosing an Open-Source Log Management System For Small Business. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2013
Mauno Pihelgas. A Comparative Analysis of Open-Source Intrusion Detection Systems. Master thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2012

Supervised BSc students

Reno Špitsmeister. Implementing a SOAR Solution in a Security Operations Center on the Example of Cybers. Bachelor thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2023
Balint Adam. Performance and Applicability Analysis of Open-source Intrusion Detection Systems in Special-purpose Networks. Bachelor thesis, Tallinn University of Technology, 2022

Developed open source tools

Simple Event Correlator - https://simple-evcorr.github.io
SLCT - https://ristov.github.io/slct/
LogHound - https://ristov.github.io/loghound/
LogPP - https://logpp.sourceforge.net
Monitord - https://ristov.github.io/monitord/
LogCluster - https://ristov.github.io/logcluster/
SCAS - https://ristov.github.io/scas/

Professional skills

Experience with network and security management applications: Simple Event Correlator (the author), Suricata, Snort, Elastic Stack, rsyslog, syslog-ng, Graphite, NfSen, Fprobe, Flow-tools, RRDtool, Nagios, HP OpenView NNM and Operations, Tivoli NetView, Net-SNMP, MRTG, Ntop, etc.
Experience with programming languages and database systems: Perl, C/C++, Python, PHP, MySQL, Bourne shell, Prolog, assembler (i86), Pascal, BASIC
Sysop experience: Linux, HP-UX, AIX, Cisco IOS