20 Cybersecurity Experts Worth Following

Cybersecurity now touches everyone. Our credit cards have been compromised, our identities stolen, and our private information on Facebook shared in secret. Let’s face it, nothing is 100% secure nor private. The media only tends to litter the headlines with sensational misinformation, only to correct or redact the news after readers and viewers have already lost interest. As a cybersecurity professional, I rely on guidance and indisputable facts and data that only top cybersecurity experts from the community can offer. While Twitter is a less than ideal platform for its security, politics and general bullying tactics, it does offer valuable, crowd-sourced opinions and insights direct from the keyboards of experts for free. Over the years, I have picked up so much more practical and actionable advice than I ever could share back myself. If you learn something, thank them, retweet and share what you have learned with your followers. Some of my picks are researchers, some hackers, some top influencers but all of them make for a worthy following. Stay Safe…

Kevin Mitnick is a former magician, computer security consultant, author of several excellent books, and of course, hacker. In 1995, Kevin was arrested and later served five years in prison for various computer and communications-related crimes. He now educates companies how to stay safe through his relationship through rising cybersecurity giant KnowBe4.

I’ve had the honor to interview Kevin Mitnick at several security events and reviewed Ghost In The Wires, his 3rd book. I’ll never forget an event in which Kevin invited me up on stage and performed identity theft on me right there and then…a truly eye-opening experience.

Brian brings his indispensable reporting and researching skills to his own books, blogs and website www.KrebsOnSecurity.com. Whether its spam, phishing, skimmers or breaches, Brian is my go-to source to find out what happened and get a detailed breakdown of how it happened. Brian is the author of Spam Nation.

My favorite work of Brian’s is his coverage on skimming devices. Brian has personally travelled to and located skimmers hidden inside ATMs. While others are soaking up the sun at these Caribbean resorts, Brian is painstakingly documenting all suspicious ATMs and notifying these resorts. I had the privilege to appear with Brian in an interview we did together for an NPR Radio special on the topic of ransomware.

Bruce Schneider is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist and cybersecurity writer. He has authored several books on general security topics, computer security and cryptography. His latest book, Data and Goliath delves into data privacy policies, fears and means to take back control. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book as it opened my eyes up to how much data we put out there and how very little privacy we actually have.

Robert is successful Canadian businessman who is the founder and CEO of The Herjavec Group. He is also an author, car enthusiast and well known television celebrity from ABC’s Shark Tank.

The Herjavec Group was just named as the #1 Cybersecurity company on the Cybersecurity 500 list published by Cybersecurity Ventures .

I had the honor of interviewing key executives at Herjavec’s Lift Off event held last year in Toronto. When I met Robert, I quickly learned he is a down-to-earth guy that also happens to be an exceptional entrepreneur and brilliant leader in the world of cybersecurity.

Adam is a consumer advocate with a comprehensive understanding of fraud, identity theft, and privacy issues that plague millions of victims. He is the author of the Amazon best-selling book entitled Swiped.

Stu runs, KnowBe4, a rising star in the world of cybersecurity that provides crucial cybersecurity training and awareness to employees and employers of all sizes. I had the privilege to interview him at the NYSE and introduce him as a keynote speaker along side Kevin Mitnick at the 2017 Cyber Investing Summit.

After reading and reviewing Future Crimes by Marc Goodman, I was impressed with his strong background in law enforcement and how in working with the FBI, allows Marc to clearly see where we are now and where we’ll be in the world of crime. Marc regularly educates his audience through his tweets, his book, and his public speaking which includes advising on how to stay one step ahead of cyber criminals.

Kaspersky is a Russian cybersecurity expert and the CEO of Kaspersky Labs, an IT security company with over 4,000 employees. He is an expert researcher and regularly provides great cyberthreat research reports. His software empire has an impressive user base of over 400 million users.

Mikko Hypponen has delivered hundreds of talks in over 40 countries over the last 20 years. His TED Talk from 2011 has been viewed by more than 1.5 Million people and translated to over 40 languages. He is active on Twitter and continues to share great insights into cybersecurity.

Don’t let her pink hair intimidate you. Katie is the Founder and CEO of Luta Security which provides solutions architects for vulnerability disclosure & bug bounty programs.

Steve is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Cybersecurity Ventures, a well-respected cybersecurity researcher, journalist, community organizer, and publisher. Steve authors annual reports on cybercrime, the cybersecurity market, and cybersecurity employment – containing de facto standard statistical information which is routinely featured and quoted by major media outlets, professional journals, academia, government leaders, technology vendors, associations, and industry experts globally. Over the past 3 years, Steve has written more than 425 articles for CSO, Cybercrime Magazine, DarkReading, Entrepreneur, Forbes, and others. In 2017, Steve was named by LinkedIn as one of the top 5 cybersecurity influencers to follow. Steve generously shares in his Tweets, articles, interviews a deep perspective of cyber security issues that affect us all.

I recently began working with Steve and Cybersecurity Ventures as Chief Media Commentator, Official Event Speaker, and Video Host

I got to know Magda Chelly when she invited me to co-author ‘Conversations With Cyber Security’s Undervalued Workforce’

Magda is a inspiration to both men and women who are thinking of getting into the exciting world of cyber. She is a cyber feminist, entrepreneur and Managing Director of Responsible Cyber based out of Singapore. I recently had the privilege to interview her on my series What Keeps You Up at Night?

Richard Stiennon is a security industry innovator. He is currently consulting, speaking and writing on all manner of security topics while organizing a startup poised to change the way enterprises protect their networks. He was most recently Chief marketing officer for Fortinet. He has also served stints at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Gartner, and Netrex, the world’s first Managed Security Service Provider.

I had the privilege of being interviewed alongside Richard on IBM’s Cyber Beat Live. 

Morgan is an internationally recognized expert on cybersecurity strategy, cyberterrorism, identity theft and privacy. His landmark testimony before Congress on Healthcare.gov changed how the government collected personally identifiable information. I had the privilege to meet up with Morgan on many podcasts and interview him at IBM’s 2016 Watson event in DC.

Graham Cluley is an award-winning security blogger, researcher, podcaster, and public speaker. He has been a well-known figure in the computer security industry since the early 90s when he worked as a programmer on the inaugural version of Dr. Solomon’s Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows.

Bob is in the trenches every day monitoring hundreds of botnets and ten of thousands infected endpoints. His malware analysis, botnet tracking and mitigation keeps us all safer in this challenging world of never-ending cyber crimes. I had the privilege to recently interview Bob on my weekly podcast.

Shira is a great resource for cybersecurity information and President of SecureMySocial which prevents reputational damage and the leakage of confidential information, and helps ensure compliance with various laws. Shira’s work delivers security without requiring employers to monitor workers.

Ludmila is a seasoned professional that educates and inspires countless people in the world of technology and cybersecurity. She has authored many insightful blogs that help readers to think beyond the surface.

Dan is a Chief Strategist and Chief Security Officer (CSO) for Security Mentor – Author, blogger, international speaker on technology & security and former government CSO. I have learned more than my share from Dan’s articles on Government Technology and his various blog posts. His generosity is only matched by his contributions to the cybersecurity community. I had the privilege to be interviewed on several segments and recently was able to return the favor when I interviewed him on my weekly series What Keeps You Up at Night?