Guests of Tech Debt Burndown Podcast

Allan Friedman

Allan Friedman is the Director of Cybersecurity Initiatives at National Telecommunications and Information Administration in the US Department of Commerce.

Prior to joining the Federal government, Friedman was a noted cybersecurity and technology policy researcher. Wearing the hats of both a technologist and a policy scholar, his work spans computer science, public policy and the social sciences, and has addressed a wide range of policy issues, from privacy to telecommunications. Friedman has over a decade of experience in cybersecurity research, with a particular focus on economic, market, and trade issues. He is the coauthor of Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2014).

Andy Ellis

Andy Ellis is the author of 1% Leadership. He is the Advisory CISO at Orca Security and the Operating Partner at YL Ventures, and is an advisor to several cyber security startups, including Vulcan, Uptycs, Grip, Perygee, Vendict, Valence, Piiano, and Eureka. He is the founder and CEO of Duha, a leadership development company that focuses on bringing training to people earlier in their careers, and is writing a book on leadership. Andy writes the Straight Up Security column for CSO Online.

Andy Ellis is a seasoned technology and business executive with deep expertise in security, managing risk, and leading an inclusive culture. A graduate of MIT and former US Air Force officer, Andy designed, built, and brought to market many of Akamai’s security products. His leadership helped propel the Fortune 1000 company from its start as a content delivery network into an industry powerhouse with a billion-dollar dedicated cybersecurity business. In his twenty-year tenure, Andy led Akamai’s information security organization from a single individual to a 90+ person team, over 40% of whom were women. In running Akamai’s security program, Andy designed systems, governed risk management, implemented policy, and supported go-to-market functions. Widely respected across the cybersecurity industry for his pragmatic approach to aligning security and business needs, Andy regularly speaks and writes on cybersecurity, leadership, diversity & inclusion, and decision-making.

Long active in internet policy and governance circles, Andy supported Akamai CEOs in roles on the NIAC and NSTAC, as well as directly served on the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council. A recognized thought leader on security issues, Andy has spoken at conferences like RSA and Business of Software, and lectured at the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, Army War College, BC Law, and the MIT Sloan School.

Andy has received a wide variety of accolades, including the CSO Compass Award, Air Force Commendation Medal, Spirit of Disneyland Award, Wine Spectator Award of Excellence (for The Arlington Inn), and was the winner of the Sherman Oaks Galleria Spelling Bee. He was inducted into the CSO Hall of Fame in 2021.

He currently serves on Harvard University’s Visiting Committee to IT. After receiving a degree in computer science from MIT, Andy served as an officer in the United States Air Force with the 609th Information Warfare Squadron and the Electronic Systems Center.

Bill Pelletier

Bill Pelletier is currently the Enterprise Security Architect for a large healthcare payer in New England, covering all aspects of security for their on-prem, cloud, and hybrid architectures. Previous roles in his career include heading up Product and Strategy at Scope Security, a startup in the Healthcare Delivery Organization Managed Security space – and as a Product Security Leader at GE Healthcare, working with CT, PET, Mammography, and X-Ray engineering teams in ensuring that new medical devices were being made more secure by design as well as in ongoing operations. Prior to dedicating his career to the healthcare space, Bill was the Enterprise Security Architect for the Personal lines business unit of Liberty Mutual Insurance.

Charity Majors

Charity Majors is an operations and database engineer and sometimes engineering manager. “Right now I am the CEO and cofounder of Honeycomb, where we build observability for distributed systems. (“Monitoring” doesn’t have to be a dirty word; give us a try.)

“Until recently I was a production engineering manager at Facebook. I spent 3.5 years working on Parse (both pre and post-acquisition by FB). I also spent several years at Linden Lab, working on the infrastructure and databases that power Second Life. I am the co-author of Database Reliability Engineering by O’Reilly.

“I was a classical piano performance major in college, but dropped out because it turns out I prefer not being dirt poor. I have been building systems and engineering teams ever since.

“I love startups, chaos and hard scaling problems, and somehow I always end up in charge of the databases.”

Eoin Woods

Eoin Woods is CTO at Endava, where he guides technical strategy, oversees capability development and directs investment in emerging technologies. Eoin is co-author of two software architecture books (Software Systems Architecture and Continuous Architecture in Practice) and is a regular conference speaker, with a particular interest in software architecture, DevOps and computer security. He has created and suffered more technical debt over the years than he likes to admit.

Gene Spafford

Eugene H. Spafford is a professor of Computer Sciences at Purdue University. He is also the founder and Executive Director Emeritus of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security. He has been working in computing as a student, researcher, consultant, and professor for 45 years. Some of his work is at the foundation of current security practice, including intrusion detection, incident response, firewalls, integrity management, and forensic investigation. His most recent work has been in cyber security policy, forensics, and future threats. He has also been a pioneer in education, including starting and heading the oldest degree-granting cybersecurity program.

Dr. Spafford has been recognized with significant honors from various organizations. These include being elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAA&S), and the Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); a Life Fellow of the ACM, the IEEE, and the (ISC)2; a Life Distinguished Fellow of the ISSA; and a member of the Cyber Security Hall of Fame — the only person to ever hold all these distinctions. In 2012 he was named one of Purdue’s inaugural Morrill Professors — the university’s highest award for the combination of scholarship, teaching, and service. In 2016, he received the State of Indiana’s highest civilian honor by being named as a Sagamore of the Wabash.

Among many other activities, he is vice-chair of ACM Publications Ethics & Plagiarism Committee, is editor-in-chief of the journal Computers & Security, serves on the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association, and as a member of the National Security Advisory Board for Sandia Laboratories.

More information may be found in the Narrative Bio For Spaf

Gene recently co-authored Cybersecurity Myths and Misconceptions

Ian Amit

Ian is the Chief Security Officer at Cimpress. He used to be a Senior Manager of Security Engineering at Amazon AWS, and prior to that held leadership positions with ZeroFOX, IOActive, Aladdin, Finjan and Comsec. He currently serves on the Advisory Board for ZeroFOX, Axon Cyber, Panorays and Marshall University. He also serves on the board of directors of BSides Las Vegas as a general director and President. Ian has had the pleasure to talk at the most sought-after conferences in the field such as BlackHat, DefCon, BlueHat, InfoSecurity, and more… He has been frequently interviewed by leading pring and web magazines and news outlets, speaking about web security, eCrime, and technology (see this page for a chronological sampler).

Jamie Dobson

Jamie Dobson is co-founder and CEO of Container Solutions, a professional services consultancy specializing in cloud migration. A first encounter with a BBC computer and BASIC at the age of nine launched a lifelong passion for programming and software development. He eventually developed a matching passion for coaching and organizational strategy to help humans work effectively and beneficially with the technology that increasingly drives our lives.

Kenn White

Kenneth White is a security engineer whose work focuses on networks and global systems. He is co-founder and Director of the Open Crypto Audit Project and led formal security reviews on TrueCrypt and OpenSSL. He currently leads applied encryption engineering in MongoDB’s global product group. He has directed R&D and security Ops in organizations ranging from startups to nonprofits to defense agencies to the Fortune 50. His work on applied signal analysis has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He created software powering the largest clinical trial and cardiac safety research networks in the world. His work on network security and forensics has been cited by the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Wired, and the BBC.