RVAsec 13

After a career in industrial controls (Honeywell) and another in fin tech (Capital One), I left corporate America to focus on community impact more than income, and founded IT4Causes, a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits with their technology challenges.  We're now entering our 10th year of serving nonprofits with segment-specific technology solutions, using a mix of paid nonprofit tech experts, skilled IT volunteers, and technology interns.

Security is obviously a huge part of what we do to ensure our for-purpose clients are protected from growing cyber threats. As all of our clients are... Read more

SOC team tips, incident response, threat hunting in Azure, SOC and AppSec teamwork

Identity and Access Management
Identity stores
Authentication and Authorization
Access Management
Privilege access Management
Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM)
IoT
AI for IAM
Application Onboarding Automation


Mike leads our global IAM solutions engineering team at Simeio. His efforts ensure proper engagement with our clients from the very beginning of their journey with Simeio to qualify, scope, propose, and win deals. Mike has solved complex identity and access problems in large client environments (CVS, ChristusHealth, Jeffries, BNYMelon, Adecco, Ahold Delhaize, Capital One, Anthem).

Mike provides a proven ability of identifying and solving real problems, and delivering IAM solutions toward maturity and optimized efficiency.  Expertise in IAM includes: strategy, operations, compliance, requirements definition, solution design, development, and enterprise wide deployment.  Mike’s solution views are influenced from delivering results for large-scale IAM transformations and establishing new IAM services in high-volume entitlement and transaction organizations... Read more

Roman Bohuk is co-founder and CEO of MetaCTF, a cyber skills platform that helps companies assess, recruit, retain, and upskill cyber talent. We specialize in competition-based exercises, such as on-demand labs, traditional jeopardy-style CTFs, and attack & defense CTFs that can be used for tool/skill training, secure coding, security awareness, and more.

Evan Booth is a builder and architect at Counter Hack, a company devoted to building fun and engaging challenges that educate and evaluate information security professionals. Armed with a profound fascination with how things are built, Evan has spent the past 20 years working on the creative, strategic, and engineering components of software and hardware projects for a wide variety of clients. Evan enjoys spending time with his family, taking stuff apart, and occasionally putting stuff back together again. ... Read more

Passionate Cyber Security Analyst with a background in culinary arts, now dedicated to safeguarding healthcare organizations. Specializing in cyber security awareness, I blend technical expertise with a flair for communication honed during my time as a chef. Working remotely allows me to indulge my love for Disney and travel while ensuring the digital safety of healthcare systems.

Ever since he blew a capacitor installing a Cd drive and causing a small fire in his first self-built computer, Corey has been obsessed with computer systems and how they work. After 13 years in the Infosec industry wearing just about every hat, from being in a SOC to hunting threats in a CIRT to Security Engineering for customers, He is happily in a security engineering role protecting Virginians saving for the most important things to them, while wearing a cool t-shirt every day as per his manager’s request.

EMbeded software developer- C, assembler (mips)
AWS Admin
RH/Centos Admin
SQL developer, dbadmin (MySQL)
PHP, bash/tcsh

Network Security Engineer, firewalls, Palo Alto and Juniper

mobile device security
RMF lifecycle artifact management
Data Governance
Good places to fish
Incident Reporting

Jeremy has built his career around protecting assets in the most critical IT sectors. He started his career working in a Network Operations Security Center for the US Army. He then went on to work as a Network Security Engineer defending Dominion’s North Anna Nuclear Power Station. He also had the privilege to serve as a Senior Network Security Engineer/Architect at Genworth Financial. Currently Jeremy works as a Client Solutions Architect for Optiv focusing on named accounts in the mid-Atlantic region. He has presented at DefCon, UNC, JMU, ECPI, FBI Infragard and holds or has held CISSP, CISM... Read more

I enjoy golf and photography and duck hunting and traveling out West. I’m also a proud Dad and husband who believes in Family First. Grateful that our son played football at UVa for 5 years and was deeply involved with the ACC as a Student Athlete Chairman. He also just received his Masters. Great experience for our entire family and friends. Also enjoy SEC football as a UGa alum and love Athens Ga for its vibe and music. Our youngest son has a band and will be enjoying his second year at JMU. They will be traveling to UNC and South Carolina for gigs this Fall. I will be a roadie! Love it. He... Read more

Leading the Corgibytes technical team is Scott, who has been called the "Bob Vila of the internet.” Scott is a polyglot developer who, at last count, is fluent in over twenty programming languages. Scott’s love of software restoration and remodeling began in college where he and his team were responsible for retrofitting the testing tools for the X-31 jet fighter. Since then, Scott has maintained a test-focused approach to his work and found the most joy in projects where an existing codebase needed to be improved.

In addition to fixing old code, Scott enjoys anime, reading sci-fi fiction and comic books and spending time with his family. And yes, he does have a Corgi, her name is Ein, and if you recognize that reference, we might just give you a discount... Read more

IT Infrastructure and the secure enterprise

Qasim "Q" Ijaz is a Director of Offensive Security at Blue Bastion Security and specializes in healthcare security and penetration testing. He has conducted hundreds of penetration tests in small to large environments with a focus on networks and web applications testing. His areas of interest include healthcare security, Active Directory, cybersecurity policy, and the "dry" business side of hacking. Qasim is a penetration test lead during the day and a teacher in the after-hours. Qasim has presented and taught at cybersecurity conferences including BSides and Blackhat on offensive security topics... Read more

I am the Director of Threat Management for the Virginia IT Agency. My group is in charge of providing Incident Response, Digital Forensics, and Vulnerability scanning services to all ~65 Executive Branch agencies in the Commonwealth.  Additionally we happily volunteer our time, tools and knowledge to helping other VA public entities in their prevention and/or response to Cyber incidents.

Kevin Johnson is the Chief Executive Officer of Secure Ideas. Kevin has a long history in the IT field including system administration, network architecture and application development. He has been involved in building incident response and forensic teams, architecting security solutions for large enterprises and penetration testing everything from government agencies to Fortune 100 companies. In addition, Kevin is a faculty member at IANS and was an instructor and author for the SANS Institute.

I am the Director of Information Technology for a growing pharmaceutical company right here in RVA. I'm now in my 10th year of stewardship of the technology environment.  While I provide comprehensive oversight, management, and strategic direction of the entire I.T. unit for our organization, as a CISSP I have specific passions for cybersecurity, and as a certified PMP, I also appreciate project/portfolio management.

Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with my family, playing the occassional videogame (PS5/PSVR2), I also enjoy running; I just ran in the Dominion Riverrock James River Scramble (10k Trail-run), and of course I love good food and good drinks with good friends... Read more

I'm a small/ medium business IT admin looking to expand my awareness of cybersecurity and expand my network of contacts in the Greater Richmond Area.  My focus is on helping businesses discover opportunities that have been left on the table during SaaS implementation/ onboarding processes and offering subscription IT services.

Jake is the founder of RVAsec and was previously the CEO for Risk Based Security that provides vulnerabilities and data breach intelligence. He previously oversaw the operations of the Open Sourced Vulnerability Database (OSVDB.org) and DataLossDB. Kouns has presented at many well-known security conferences, including RSA, Black Hat, DEF CON, DerbyCon, Bsides, CISO Executive Summit, IEEE, FIRST, CanSecWest, InfoSecWorld, SOURCE and SyScan.

He is the co-author of Information Technology Risk Management in Enterprise Environments, Wiley, 2010, and The Chief Information Security Officer, IT Governa... Read more

Because of my disabilities, and now long they went undiagnosed, I don't know what to say or not say, to other attendees of the Spectrum of Opportunity online conference series. I expect hardly anyone, if anyone, will read this. But decades of harsh experience have taught me to get out in front of others' assumptions and interpretations about me.

My disabilities went undiagnosed for decades. I was in my twenties before I was finally correctly diagnosed with clinical depression, and my diagnosis of non=hyper attention deficit came a few years later. I didn't hear my autism diagnosis until my earl... Read more

Simeio's only concern is Identity. IAM/IGA/PAM & CIAM. We work with multiple industry leaders to bring our customers the very best solutions. Application Onboarding is a particular strength of ours.

Darryl MacLeod works for the Lares Advisory Services team and has over 20 years of experience in the IT security sector, having been responsible for developing, managing, and assessing information security programs for all levels of enterprise and government-level organizations. He has spoken at multiple conferences such as Security BSides St.John’s, GoSec, and Texas Cyber Summit. He also sits on the Board of Directors for AtlSecCon and is the former lead organizer of Security BSides Cape Breton.

Kim is the founder and CEO of MAXX Potential, a tech talent incubator whose unique win-win-win business model has been recognized by Fast Company and Southern Living Magazine as one of the innovations changing the South. Prior to MAXX, Kim held global technology roles in Fortune 500 organizations as well as co-founding multiple startups and the rvatech/women conference. She also serves on the advisory board for the CodeRVA High School.

Ell Marquez is a proud Hacking Is Not and Crime and Operation Safe escape advocate. She has traveled the world for five years, educating security practitioners on subjects from on-prem infrastructure to the cloud and everything in between. I've traveled the world educating security practitioners on subjects from on-prem infrastructure to the cloud and everything in between.

"My greatest skill is the ability to listen and clearly communicate across all levels of the enterprise. My goal is to help organizations mature by creating highly effective security programs and teams that integrate seamlessly with company culture, vision, and mission." 

Mr. McOmie started in offensive security in 1994 and is a trusted advisor, security leader and mentor. With a career focus in offensive security and a strong technical background, he is recognized for his excellence in developing and executing enterprise security strategies and leading technical and tactical programs. He has founded and contributed to several industry leading organizations over his career including start ups, fortune 100 enterprises, and federal agencies. As an extrovert, he passionately supports the information security community, is a featured speaker at various conferences... Read more

Mr. McOmie started in offensive security in 1994 and is a trusted advisor, security leader and mentor. With a career focus in offensive security and a strong technical background, he is recognized for his excellence in developing and executing enterprise security strategies and leading technical and tactical programs. He has founded and contributed to several industry leading organizations over his career including start ups, fortune 100 enterprises, and federal agencies. As an extrovert, he passionately supports the information security community, is a featured speaker at various conferences... Read more

Hello! My name is Vince and I'm a professional moto technician and student of Information Technology. I'm currently working towards switching industries and taking my 10+ years of professional critical analysis and apply it to the field of information technology. I currently study IT at Reynolds community college in Richmond VA, set to graduate with an Associates of applied Science in May 2025. I am also enrolled to continue into a bachelor's program in Information Security at the University of Richmond, starting fall of 2025. I also hold several CompTIA certs, and a relentless tinkerer in my home... Read more

Samuel S. Panicker specializes in cyber security and data protection. He is currently the CISO for NTS with over twenty-six years of experience in the field. Sam has authored several security awareness programs for SANS and Black Hat including “A healthy level of paranoia”.

Application security leader.
I love to build, break, and work directly with developers to help fix and optimize the development process to stop security from being such a roadblock in the development pipeline.

Former pen tester -> senior appsec engineer

Kymberlee is co-founder and CEO of Zatik Security, a fractional product security consulting company whose mission is to make world-class cybersecurity expertise available to companies of all sizes. A dynamic engineering leader and public speaker known for developing high-performing multidisciplinary teams, Kymberlee is a recognized expert in the information security industry with extensive experience in product security incident response operations and bug bounties, Secure Development Lifecycle (SDL), and Open Source Security strategy.

Ms. Price speaks regularly at conferences around the world and is on the content review boards for Black Hat USA and LocoMocoSec... Read more

I am a recruiter for the James Madison University MBA Program. We have specialized MBA programs in Information Security, Executive Leadership and Innovation. You can talk to me to learn more about our online MBA program and how it can help you advance your knowledge base and career.

Ayush is a Cyber Security Engineer specialising in Cloud and Data Security, and DevSecOps practices. He loves to develop automation for security controls and processes. He has delivered talks at various conferences and security communities like GrayHat'20, and Cyber Security Global Summit to name a few. He also contributes to the OWASP Ranchi chapter as the Chapter Lead. He currently works at CRED as a cloud & data security engineer.

Jason Ross is a passionate cybersecurity expert with a diverse skill set, currently focused on building tools and processes to test the security of generative AI models & applications that use them. Jason's past work experiences include penetration testing, cloud security, and OSINT.

Jason is active in the security community, as a staff member and volunteer at several industry conferences. He is committed to education as an adjunct faculty member at the RIT Global Cybersecurity Institute, and is a frequent speaker at security events.

Jennifer Shannon is a Senior Security Consultant at Secure Ideas with a background in malware analysis, penetration testing, and training. An avid computer geek for most of her life, she began her journey in cybersecurity as a SOC Analyst where she showed an aptitude for both penetration testing and malware analysis. She has experience performing penetration tests against web applications, mobile software and platforms, and physical security assessments.

Jennifer discovered a passion for computers and problem solving at a young age. She bought Steal This Computer Book 2.0, by Wallace Wang, with one of her first paychecks, and became enamored with hacking and cyber security. While pursuing her degree she dedicated time to teaching computing skills to underrepresented minorities. She is the co-leader for the TOOOL chapter in Jacksonville, FL. Jennifer continues to be passionate about teaching and is eager to share her knowledge with others... Read more

Fashion & Style | Empathy | Security Awareness & Culture | InfoSec for the non-tech | Blogger | Starbucks | People-watcher | USAF Vet | GOSI | Sec+ | CySA+

Chris is the founder of RVAsec and Head of Innovation at Project Discovery, Inc. Chris has been in the security industry for 27 years, working in various research and security roles with Focal Point, HP (SPI Dynamics) and Capital One. He is the author of the “Nikto” web server assessment tool, which has been a top-rated free security tool since 2003, and several other OSS tools. Chris was also a founder and development lead of the Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) project.

Anthony is just someone that has a passion for helping people and shares that passion through cybersecurity.