Press

Career Highlights

•  Working as a Senior Security Operations Engineer at Malwarebytes.
• Spoke at BSides ABQ about the journey to finding vulnerabilities and the importance of: FAIL HARDER.
  
• Worked as a Lead Security Engineer for NASA's Human Spaceflight Program: architecting/implementing security solutions into the Space Network.
•  Worked for Affirm, a Silicon Valley Startup Company to help further mature their security operations team through detection engineering, playbook creation, and procedural development.
  
•  The only security researcher to discover a high security vulnerability for Tesla vehicles that affect the driving screen and autopilot notifications.
• Added to the Tesla Hall of Fame - Bugcrowd.
•  Spoke at a Managed Security Services Forum in Albuquerque, where we discussed the future of Cybersecurity, and how we can help build up the security architects of the future.
• Worked as a government contractor for U.S. Military Bases.
  
• For funsies, made a Pass the Butter robot video from the show, Rick and Morty.

Career

Jake's impoverished upbringing instilled in him a strong sense of resourcefulness, which proved to be an invaluable asset in his journey into the world of cybersecurity. Despite the challenging circumstances, his family recognized and valued the opportunities afforded by the internet revolution, and his childhood nickname of "button man" reflected his insatiable curiosity for understanding the inner workings of technology. These early experiences provided a solid foundation for his eventual passion for computer security, and his resourcefulness became an essential tool for navigating the many obstacles he encountered along the way.

Jake's interest was piqued after building a website in high school, which was subsequently hacked due to a lack of security measures. This experience led him on a journey of discovery, taking him through college, where he worked as a computer technician, then to a system administrator position in a school district, followed by stints at a managed service provider and the U.S.'s second-largest internet service provider.

Jake's interest in cybersecurity eventually led him to work at a Penetration Testing company, where he helped build out their security operations division, including developing advanced persistent threat tests, training, and mentoring, among other responsibilities. He was then privileged to work for NASA's Human Spaceflight division, where he helped implement security solutions into the Space Network. He then worked at a San Francisco FinTech startup company, where he had contributed to the growth of their security operations team.

Through each role, Jake has endeavored to leave each company more secure than when he first arrived, using his knowledge and skills to develop and implement security solutions, build playbooks, and mentor and train colleagues. As he continues to grow and learn in this exciting field, he looks forward to each new opportunity to develop his skills and contribute to the cybersecurity community.

Cybersecurity Philosophies

Jake has borrowed several different philosophies from some great individuals and works hard to implement them into his everyday work. He believes that cybersecurity is a field that breaks into every industry and vertical, so it's important to understand how others have solved complex problems in other areas and apply those lessons here. Jake finds inspiration in the following quotes:

• "Failure is not an option, it's a prerequisite." - Unknown
• "Simplify, then add lightness." - Colin Chapman
• "Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't." - Bill Nye
• "The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding." - Leonardo da Vinci
• "Creating the chaos is easy, thinking about safety is hard." - Norah Jones

He takes these words to heart and uses them as motivation to approach each new challenge with a curious and open mind. For Jake, understanding and simplicity are key in creating effective cybersecurity solutions.

Additional Privacy Information

As a company that values privacy, it's important to draw attention to certain images on our website that have been blurred out for specific reasons. The decision to obscure these images is due to concerns around the current state of facial recognition software. Given its inherent biases and potential for invasive use, we believe it is necessary to take proactive measures to protect individual privacy and basic rights. To this end, we have employed software such as Fawkes to cloak the images on our website with a 'high' setting, resulting in certain peculiarities. Our goal is to raise awareness around the importance of privacy protection and to showcase practical solutions that can help combat the negative effects of facial recognition technology.

Facial Recognition Defense (Image Cloaking)

The New York Times (Clearview AI)

BanFacialRecognition