Wild West Hackin' Fest - Deadwood 2024

In my first career, I spent 35 years at the National Security Agency as a Vulnerability Analyst for the defense, from junior analyst to executive manager. I also had the honor of helping found and lead two of the Nation’s largest organizations dedicated to this mission – the Systems and Network Attack Center, and the Vulnerability Analysis and Operational Group. At NSA, Vulnerability Analysis for defense was a “full spectrum” activity, designed to emulate the resources of a nation-state adversary and their ability to operate at scale. In this talk, I’ll offer a historical and personal perspective how this field of analysis evolved from a focus on mathematics and cryptography, through systems and software, and then to “live” operational systems. And what’s it like to spend a career as a cyberdefender for the DoD and the nation, but homed inside of an intelligence agency? We’ll discuss the mission, technical, and cultural interplay of cyberdefense and offense/intelligence as it played out at NSA. War stories, culture clashes, bureaucratic mazes? Of course! But in the end, better security for all.