ZHI REN JAMES TAN

Passionate information security student with hands-on experience in system administration, vulnerability assessment, and IT project management. Known for strong analytical thinking, adaptability, and the ability to work collaboratively in diverse teams. Eager to develop consulting skills and support clients in enhancing their cybersecurity programs through both technical assessment and solution implementation.

Seeking to transition into new field, leveraging skills developed in fast-paced IT environment. Expertise in troubleshooting, system maintenance, and user support. Ready to bring technical acumen and problem-solving abilities to new and challenging role.

Ransomware Insight Analyzer– Research Project (Published at SIN’24 Conference)

• Built a full ransomware-analysis system that processes 220k+ CVE records to identify the most exploited vulnerabilities, top ransomware gangs, attack vectors, and industry targets.
• Implemented end-to-end data engineering pipeline: multi-source data collection, merging, cleaning, TF-IDF vectorization, Aho-Corasick keyword matching, and custom Heap Sort and dictionary-counting algorithms for analytics.
• Developed machine-learning models (Random Forest) achieving up to 91–99 percent accuracy for attack and malware classification, enabling automated identification of ransomware categories and attack factors.
• Created data visualizations and an interactive Flask-based GUI for real-time exploration of ransomware trends across industries, years, and threat groups.
• Co-authored and presented the paper at the 17th International Conference on Security of Information and Networks (SIN’24), accepted for IEEE publication.

DNS Tunnel & Covert Channel Detection – Security Analytics Project

• Developed an automated DNS tunneling detection system combining Machine Learning and LLM-based analysis, enabling accurate classification of benign vs covert DNS traffic.
• Built a full pipeline for PCAP ingestion, DNS feature extraction (entropy, label structure, digit ratios), normalization, and model inference via Streamlit dashboard.
• Trained a Random Forest classifier on engineered DNS features, achieving 95.2 percent accuracy across 131 unseen PCAPs.
• Integrated OpenAI GPT and Llama-3.2 models for semantic traffic reasoning, producing hybrid detections with 99.85 percent accuracy.
• Designed a modular architecture supporting ML, LLM, and hybrid detection modes, with interactive visualizations and automated threat reporting.

AI Cybersecurity Incident Analysis Tool – UQ Cyber & SIT (Nominated for ICT Innovation Day Showcase)

• .Developed an end-to-end AI system that automates the analysis of PDPC cybersecurity incident reports, extracting vulnerabilities and mapping them to CWE and APQC business process frameworks.
• .Designed two robust extraction workflows to handle unstructured regulatory PDFs using layout-aware parsing, BM25 + semantic hybrid retrieval, and evidence-first anti-hallucination prompts.
• .Built a verification pipeline using GPT-4.1, implementing structured reasoning, Chain-of-Thought evaluation, and a multi-tier confidence scoring mechanism for vulnerability integrity checks.
• Automated classification of human vs technical errors, semantic CWE matching, APQC mapping, and mitigation recommendation generation using a hybrid RAG + LLM workflow.
• Collaborated with industry partner UQ Cyber (University of Queensland) to refine system evaluation, ensure methodological correctness, and incorporate best practices in secure software development.

• Singapore Institute of Technology Aug 2023 (ongoing)
• SIT Ambassadors: Represented SIT during official engagements including ministerial visits and the SIT@NYP (SNAIC) Grand Opening. Supported outreach and community initiatives to strengthen student engagement and external relations. Collaborated with faculty and administrative teams to deliver campus tours and orientation experiences for prospective students.
• SIT Vanguard: Acted as a student leader to promote SIT’s culture of innovation, inclusion, and collaboration. Led peer engagement activities and mentorship sessions to support the SIT community. Contributed to initiatives that enhanced campus belonging and leadership development among students.