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.

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).

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.

Krysztof (Chris) Daniel

Krzysztof (Chris) Daniel is a researcher and advisor for DXC Leading Edge, teaching others how to effectively use Wardley Maps for their benefit. Chris works with customers to apply Wardley Maps to particular use cases, including outsourcing, IT modernization and business transformation. He enjoys mapping sessions with customers, guiding a process of identifying opportunities and risks and defining areas for growth. Chris is the author of the online Wardley Mapping course and an active member of the broader Wardley Mapping community.

Olivier Jacques

A technology enthusiast and DevOps transformation principal at DXC Technology, Olivier Jacques specializes in DevOps, software engineering, inner source and open source practices. He created DXC’s DevOps dojos, events and practices that combine training with hands-on labs, gamification with badges, and guidance from DevOps coaches. Olivier is a frequent speaker at DevOps and software engineering conferences.