About Ami Heines | Ami Heines

Ami Heines — AI Security & Governance Architect

I secure, gate, and govern AI systems for regulated industries — and I build the enforcement myself, so your AI is safe to ship and able to survive an audit. Guardrails and hard limits for LLM apps and agents, the EU AI Act / ISO 42001 controls behind them, and tamper-evident audit trails. Not slide-deck advice — production infrastructure, where getting it wrong is not an option.

The short version

I’m a senior software architect — thirty years in software, from developer to team leader running small teams. The last seven I’ve spent in security, governance and compliance (GRC); earlier work spans fintech and lending, gambling, and blockchain. I own a project end to end: architecture, build, cloud / DevOps, and running it after launch. I deliver one of two ways — by leading a small, senior remote team (seven years as backend architect and team lead for a compliance / GRC SaaS platform, with developers across Israel and India), or by building it fast myself with AI development tools like Claude Code, so one experienced architect ships at the pace of a whole team.

Alongside building, I protect companies from surprise cloud and AI bills — the runaway costs that can spike out of nowhere.

A few past projects: an automated private-lending platform in California; the modernization of a licensed gambling / lottery operation in the Philippines; and a private, biometric-secured stablecoin wallet for end users. I’m also a startup founder (a MEMS-display company, seven patents) with a math & physics degree. Best fit for a referral: a company that needs a serious backend, fintech, or blockchain product built properly — or a messy legacy system modernized — by someone senior who owns the outcome.

Background

I have been building production systems since 1993. For the past seven years I have been the backend architect for CISOteria, a security governance and compliance (GRC) SaaS platform — which also powers the Israel National Cyber Directorate’s GRC portal (grc.cyber.gov.il). I own systems end to end: API and data-layer design, legacy modernization, containerization, SSO / SAML, and the monitoring and audit trails underneath.

That GRC and security background is exactly what AI now needs. AI systems fail in the seams — between identity, data protection, prompt handling, output validation, governance, and monitoring. The tools for each layer are the easy part; owning the transitions between them is where security is won or lost. I build the gateways, guardrails, and verifiable audit trails that hold those seams together — and I have built the underlying pattern as Guardrail, a fail-closed AI gateway.

I run my own infrastructure — bare-metal servers, self-hosted mail, monitoring stacks, and 4-node BFT consensus chains for tamper-proof records. Everything I sell to clients, I use myself.

Philosophy

Build it, don’t just talk about it. Every system I recommend is something I have built and deployed myself. I don’t do slide-deck consulting — the market is already full of people who audit AI governance but can’t build the enforcement.

The technology is the how, not the what. I don’t sell “blockchain” or “AI.” I sell fraud prevention, spend control, and tamper-proof audit trails. The technology underneath — a private chain, a gateway, a policy engine — is an implementation detail, not the value.

Fail closed. When an AI feature or a cloud resource hits a limit, it should stop — not quietly run up an unlimited bill or leak data. Safe defaults, hard caps, and enforced controls beat dashboards that only tell you what already went wrong.

Simple first, then scale. A working proof of concept teaches you more than a 50-page architecture document. Start small, prove it works for your case, then grow.

What I’m Looking For

I take on short projects (scoped, fixed price), ongoing / fractional-architect engagements, and architecture reviews. Best fit: teams shipping AI or handling sensitive records who need the controls to actually hold — regulated SaaS, GRC / compliance, financial services, healthcare, legal, real estate, and government systems.

I also write near-daily about AI spend and abuse control at smallestbusiness.com.

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