Alan Paller
Alan Paller founded SANS, a college and professional cybersecurity training school that has trained more than 145,000 cybersecurity technologists in 72 countries. He oversees the Internet Storm Center, the annual identification of the "Seven Most Dangerous New Attack Vectors" and a global program that identifies and celebrates people responsible for remarkable improvement in cyber risk reduction. He has testified before the US Senate and House and was an initial member of the President's National Infrastructure Assurance Council. He was chosen by OMB and the Federal CIO Council as the 2005 Azimuth Award winner, a lifetime achievement award recognizing outstanding service of a non-government person to improving federal information technology. In 2010, the Washington Post named him one of seven people "worth knowing, or knowing about" in cyber security. He co-chairs the Secretary of Homeland Security's Task Force on CyberSkills, and serves on the FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council and on the NASA Advisory Council. Earlier in his career Alan helped build one of the first major software companies, took it public, and merged it into a larger company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. His degrees are from Cornell University and the Massachusetts institute of Technology
Dr. Johannes Ullrich, Ph.D.
As Chief Research Officer for the SANS Institute, Johannes is currently responsible for the SANS Internet Storm Center (ISC) and the GIAC Gold program. He founded DShield.org in 2000, which is now the data collection engine behind the ISC. His work with the ISC has been widely recognized, and in 2004, Network World named him one of the 50 most powerful people in the networking industry. Prior to working for SANS, Johannes worked as a lead support engineer for a web development company and as a research physicist. Johannes holds a Ph.D. in Physics from SUNY Albany and is located in Jacksonville FL.
Eric Cole, Ph.D.
Dr. Cole is an industry-recognized security expert with over 20 years of hands-on experience. Dr. Cole has experience in information technology with a focus on helping customers focus in on the right areas of security by building out a dynamic defense. Dr. Cole has a master's degree in computer science from NYIT and a doctorate from Pace University with a concentration in information security. Dr. Cole is the author of several books, including Hackers Beware, Hiding in Plain Site, Network Security Bible, and Insider Threat. He is the inventor of over 20 patents and is a researcher, writer, and speaker. He is also a member of the Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th President and several executive advisory boards. Dr. Cole is founder of Secure Anchor Consulting in which he provides state of the art security services and expert witness work. He also served as CTO of McAfee and Chief Scientist for Lockheed Martin. Dr. Cole is actively involved with the SANS Technology Institute (STI) and SANS working with students, teaching, and maintaining and developing courseware. He is a SANS faculty Fellow and course author. Dr. Cole is an executive leader at Secure Anchor Consulting where he provides leading-edge cyber security consulting services and leads research and development initiatives to advance the state-of-the-art in information systems security.
Ed Skoudis
Ed Skoudis is the founder of Counter Hack, an innovative organization that designs, builds, and operates popular infosec challenges and simulations including CyberCity, NetWars, Cyber Quests, and Cyber Foundations. As director of the CyberCity project, Ed oversees the development of missions which help train cyber warriors in how to defend the kinetic assets of a physical, miniaturized city. Ed's expertise includes hacker attacks and defenses, incident response, and malware analysis, with over fifteen years of experience in information security. Ed authored and regularly teaches the SANS courses on network penetration testing (Security 560) and incident response (Security 504), helping over three thousand information security professionals each year improve their skills and abilities to defend their networks. He has performed numerous security assessments; conducted exhaustive anti-virus, anti-spyware, Virtual Machine, and IPS research; and responded to computer attacks for clients in government, military, financial, high technology, healthcare, and other industries. Previously, Ed served as a security consultant with InGuardians, International Network Services (INS), Global Integrity, Predictive Systems, SAIC, and Bell Communications Research (Bellcore). Ed also blogs about command line tips and penetration testing.
Rob Lee
Rob Lee is an entrepreneur and consultant in the Washington, DC area, specializing in information security, incident response, and digital forensics. Rob is currently the curriculum lead and author for digital forensic and incident response training at the SANS Institute in addition to owning his own firm. Rob has more than 15 years of experience in computer forensics, vulnerability and exploit discovery, intrusion detection/prevention, and incident response.
Rob graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy and served in the U.S. Air Force as a founding member of the 609th Information Warfare Squadron, the first U.S. military operational unit focused on information warfare. Later, he was a member of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) where he led a team conducting computer crime investigations, incident response, and computer forensics. Prior to starting his own firm, he directly worked with a variety of government agencies in the law enforcement, U.S. Department of Defense, and intelligence communities as the technical lead for a vulnerability discovery and an exploit development team, lead for a cyber forensics branch, and lead for a computer forensic and security software development team. Rob was also a director for MANDIANT, a company focused on investigating advanced adversaries, such as the APT, for four years prior to starting his own business.
Rob co-authored the book Know Your Enemy, 2nd Edition. Rob earned his MBA from Georgetown University in Washington DC. He was awarded the Digital Forensic Examiner of the Year from the Forensic 4Cast Awards. Rob is an ardent blogger about computer forensics and incident response topics at the SANS Computer Forensic Blog. Rob is also a co-author of the MANDIANT threat intelligence report M-Trends: The Advanced Persistent Threat.
