Francesco Oghabi

About me

I'm Francesco Oghabi, an Information Engineer registered with the Italian Professional Engineers' Association (Ancona Chapter, n. 4533) and a Court-Appointed Technical Expert (CTU) at the Court of Ancona, Italy.

I work end-to-end across Machine Learning, cloud infrastructure, and information security, with 10+ years of experience in software development and enterprise systems delivery. With a strong international background and a results-driven mindset, I've led complex technical projects — from space missions with the European Space Agency to high-performance eCommerce solutions for global brands like Ferrari and Foscarini.

Over the years I've developed deep vertical expertise in Magento and Adobe Commerce, where I offer day-rate freelance consulting for cloud-native architectures, performance optimization, migrations and CI/CD setup. I work daily with Kubernetes, AWS/GCP, IAM systems (Keycloak), and backend frameworks (Django, FastAPI, Laravel, Symfony), with constant focus on clean code, security, and performance.

On the AI/ML side I'm Founder & CTO of hellfirecloud.it, where I bring RAG systems and on-premise enterprise LLMs into production (privacy-first, no third-party cloud), fine-tune open-source models via Hugging Face, build MLOps pipelines on Kubernetes, and develop Computer Vision solutions for object detection, OCR, and video analytics. This isn't a new field for me: my master's thesis (2018) was already on LSTM deep learning for malware detection.

I regularly teach Python, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence courses for universities (UniCamillus), tech bootcamps (Boolean), training providers (Forma.Temp, Formaconf, Mnemosine), professional orders (Order of Engineers of Ancona), and industry associations (GUFPI-ISMA). I also teach modules in university teacher-qualification programs (60 CFU "Didactics and Programming Languages", 30 CFU "Didactics and Foundations of Information Processing Systems"). See full teaching references →

I'm also a certified Scrum Master and a two-time Master's graduate, with deep interest in ethics, privacy (GDPR), and the impact of emerging technologies.

Court-Appointed Technical Expert (CTU) and Party Expert (CTP)

Registered with the Court of Ancona as a Court-Appointed Technical Expert, I provide forensic and technical consulting to courts, judges, attorneys, companies and private parties on all matters within my professional scope: information security, banking and IT fraud, digital forensics, cybercrime, software copyright, GDPR, and software asset valuation.

Banking and IT fraud

  • Technical analysis of disputed online banking transactions (phishing, vishing, SIM swap, smishing)
  • Reconstruction of Business Email Compromise (BEC) and diverted invoices
  • Forensic reports on home-banking fraud, fraudulent wire transfers, missing PSD2 Strong Customer Authentication
  • Liability assessment between user, bank and payment service providers
  • Credit card, e-commerce, marketplace and digital wallet fraud analysis

Digital forensics

  • Forensic acquisition of devices (computers, servers, smartphones) with chain of custody aligned with ISO/IEC 27037 best practices
  • Logical and physical extraction from hard drives, SSDs, mobile devices (iOS/Android) and removable media
  • Network traffic forensics, application server logs, and cloud audit logs (AWS CloudTrail, GCP Audit Logs, Azure Monitor)
  • Deleted file recovery, event timeline reconstruction, metadata and system artifact analysis
  • Acquisition reports and technical opinions suitable for court use

Cybercrime, unauthorized access and data breach

  • Expert reports on unauthorized access to computer systems (art. 615-ter Italian Criminal Code)
  • Investigations into ransomware, data exfiltration, DDoS attacks
  • Reconstruction of attacker modus operandi and identification of Indicators of Compromise (IoC)
  • Technical support for notifications to the Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante) and judicial authorities following data breaches
  • Support in insider threat investigations and corporate data theft cases

Software copyright and IT contractual disputes

  • Expert reports on software plagiarism, unauthorized reverse engineering, illegitimate source code reuse
  • Technical assessment of software quality in disputes between client and supplier
  • Contractual compliance analysis (SLAs, performance, security, deliverables)
  • Technical liability assessment in case of malfunction or IT-related damage
  • Analysis of software license misuse (open source, proprietary, SaaS)

Privacy, GDPR and data protection

  • GDPR compliance assessments on personal data processing
  • Expert reports on privacy violations and data leaks
  • Analysis of the chain of responsibility between controller, processor and sub-processors
  • Technical evaluation of security measures under art. 32 GDPR
  • Support in proceedings before the Italian Data Protection Authority

Software asset valuation

Sworn appraisals and technical-accounting reports for software capitalization for tax, M&A and accounting purposes, based on Function Point Analysis (IFPUG CPM 4.3.1) and compliant with IAS 38 / OIC 24. Details: dedicated software capitalization service.

Engagement modes

  • CTU appointed by the Judge in civil and criminal proceedings
  • CTP (Party Expert) supporting attorneys, companies and private parties
  • Out-of-court expert report for internal use, mediation, ADR
  • Pre-trial technical assessment under art. 696 and 696-bis of the Italian Civil Procedure Code

I operate primarily within the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal of Ancona but I'm available for assignments throughout Italy. For CTP consulting requests or quotes, email me at francesco@oghabi.it.

IT consulting for companies

I work as a consultant for national and international companies, handling both end-to-end projects and targeted engagements to improve infrastructure, security and system performance. For Magento/Adobe Commerce projects see my dedicated Magento consulting page; for AI/ML see hellfirecloud.it.

Education and credentials

  • State Examination for Professional Engineer Qualification (Italy)

    Professional registry n. 4533 — Ancona Chapter

  • Postgraduate Master's (II level)

    Università di Macerata

    Thesis: Asymmetric information and market manipulation

  • Master's Degree in Computer and Automation Engineering

    Università Politecnica delle Marche

    Thesis: Malware detection using LSTM deep neural network with pre-trained embeddings

  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer and Automation Engineering

    Università Politecnica delle Marche

    Thesis: Use of linguistic style for the evaluation of ties among Social Network Services users