Sai Teja Kotagiri
Cybersecurity Analyst, Cyber Security Advisor
Austin, Texas, United States
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Sai Teja Kotagiri is a cybersecurity professional with hands-on experience securing large-scale enterprise and public-sector environments, with a strong focus on vulnerability management, network security, web application security, and threat detection. He currently works as a Network Security Analyst, supporting critical health systems and protecting sensitive data including PHI and PII.
Sai’s expertise spans the full lifecycle of security operations — from identifying and prioritizing high-risk vulnerabilities to implementing defensive controls and validating remediation. He has led enterprise-wide vulnerability management programs using Tenable.io, Tenable.sc, Qualys, and Veracode, helping organizations reduce risk through data-driven remediation and measurable security outcomes.
In the area of application and network security, Sai has designed, deployed, and managed Web Application Firewalls (WAF) and Palo Alto firewalls, onboarding production applications, tuning OWASP Top 10 protections, and integrating security telemetry into SIEM platforms. His work includes WAF policy design, false-positive reduction, SSL/TLS hardening, secure cookie enforcement, and real-time attack monitoring.
Sai also brings strong experience in SIEM and threat detection, having built dashboards, alerts, and analytics using Microsoft Sentinel, NetWitness, Splunk, and QRadar. He actively monitors cyber threat intelligence (CTI) from sources such as CISA, US-CERT, and MS-ISAC, correlating indicators of compromise with internal telemetry to support rapid incident response.
Previously, Sai worked across financial and enterprise environments where he supported endpoint security (CrowdStrike Falcon), email and phishing analysis (KnowBe4, Phisher), DLP investigations, and patch management workflows integrated with ServiceNow and Archer GRC. His work consistently bridges technical depth with governance, risk, and compliance expectations, including NIST, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and healthcare security requirements.
Sai is passionate about sharing practical, real-world security knowledge with the community. His speaking interests focus on vulnerability risk reduction, WAF strategy, SIEM-driven detection, and securing legacy applications in modern threat landscapes. He brings an engineering-first perspective grounded in operational experience, making his sessions highly relevant for practitioners and security leaders alike.
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Disabling Weak SSL/TLS Ciphers using Web App Firewall: A Practical Approach to App Hardening
In today’s enterprise environments, many applications continue to rely on outdated or weak SSL/TLS cipher configurations that expose systems to downgrade attacks, data interception, and compliance violations. These weaknesses often persist due to legacy dependencies, lack of visibility, or concerns about breaking application functionality. As attackers increasingly exploit cryptographic misconfigurations, securing transport-layer communication has become a critical component of application security.
This talk explores a practical, real-world approach to identifying and disabling weak SSL and TLS ciphers while maintaining application availability using Web application Firewall. It explains how insecure cipher suites are introduced into production environments, how to assess their risk, and how to apply modern encryption standards aligned with industry best practices. The session also highlights how cipher hardening supports vulnerability management programs and strengthens overall security posture.
Key discussion points will include:
Understanding Weak SSL/TLS Ciphers – How outdated cipher suites weaken encryption and create attack opportunities.
Identifying Insecure Cipher Configurations – Practical methods to detect weak ciphers in enterprise applications.
Applying Secure Cipher Standards – How to safely disable weak ciphers in WAF and enforce strong encryption without disrupting services.
Validating Secure Communication – Techniques to verify successful hardening and ensure compatibility with modern clients.
Cipher Hardening in Vulnerability Management – How SSL/TLS improvements reduce risk, audit findings, and compliance gaps.
The session focuses on real-world lessons learned from securing production applications and addresses common challenges organizations face when modernizing cryptographic configurations. Attendees will gain clear, actionable guidance on improving application security through effective SSL/TLS hardening.
Strengthening encryption is not just a configuration change—it is a foundational step toward reducing application attack surface and improving long-term security resilience. This session provides practical insight into making SSL/TLS security a reliable and sustainable part of enterprise application defense.
A practical approach to hardening application security by removing insecure SSL/TLS ciphers.
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