LabsCON 2024

Austin Larsen

Senior Threat Analyst at Mandiant Intelligence

Austin Larsen is currently a Senior Threat Analyst on a six month rotation with the Advanced Practices team, part of Mandiant Intelligence. Austin also leads Mandiant’s Victim Notification Program in the Western United States and serves as a liaison between Mandiant and federal partners. As a consultant within Mandiant’s incident response practice, Austin provides emergency as well as proactive services to a broad range of organizations. Austin leads engagements involving Nation-State actors and advanced threat groups, and has helped hundreds of organizations navigate security incidents.

Dakota Cary

Strategic Advisory Consultant at SentinelOne

Dakota Cary is a strategic advisory consultant at SentinelOne. His reports examine artificial intelligence and cybersecurity research at Chinese universities, the People’s Liberation Army’s efforts to automate software vulnerability discovery, and new policies to improve China’s cybersecurity-talent pipeline. Prior to SentinelOne, he was a research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology on the CyberAI Project. He focuses on China’s efforts to develop its hacking capabilities. Cary has also testified before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Dr Cristina Cifuentes

Vice President at Oracle’s Software Assurance organization

Dr Cristina Cifuentes is Vice President of Oracle’s Software Assurance organization, leading a team of world-class security researchers and engineers whose passion lies in solving the big issues in Software Assurance. Cristina was the founding Director of Oracle Labs Australia in 2010, a team she led for close to 12 years. Cristina’s passion for tackling the big issues in the field of Program Analysis began with her doctoral work in binary decompilation at the Queensland University of Technology, which led to her being named the Mother of Decompilation for her contributions to this domain. In an interview with Richard Morris for Geek of the Week, Cristina talks about Parfait, Walkabout and her career journey in this field. Before she joined Oracle and Sun Microsystems, Cristina held academic posts at major Australian Universities, co-edited Going Digital, a landmark book on Cybersecurity, and served on the executive committees of ACM SIGPLAN and IEEE Reverse Engineering. Cristina continues to play an active role in the international programming language and software security communities. Where possible, she channels her interests into mentoring young programmers through the CoderDojo network and mentoring women in STEM.

Drea London Petter

Drea has more than two decades of experience in Digital Forensic and Incident Response Services. She started her career in the AirForce Office of Special Investigations at the Defense Computer Forensic Lab (DCFL). Since then Drea has overseen complex investigations and led dynamic teams of responders for consulting firms such as IBM and Stroz Friedberg, as well as global enterprises like VMware and Wyndham. As a recognized industry speaker, veteran, and diversity advocate, Drea is committed to advancing the field and supporting underrepresented groups. In her free time, she enjoys quality moments with her family, engaging in sports, and exploring the many amusement parks in her hometown of Orlando, FL.

Elly Rostoum

Managing Director at Alperovitch Institute for Cybersecurity Studies at Johns Hopkins University

Elly Rostoum is a former U.S. Intelligence Analyst and National Security Council staffer at the White House. She is the Managing Director of the Alperovitch Institute for Cybersecurity Studies at Johns Hopkins University, where she teaches courses on national security vulnerabilities of critical and emerging technologies, intelligence, public policy, strategic studies, and energy markets; with a regional expertise covering China and the Middle East. Elly’s research examines American national security vulnerabilities of foreign direct investment, with a focus on foundational and critical and emerging technologies in the AI, finance, biotech, and IoT sectors. Elly is an expert on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’ (CFIUS) governance. Her current book project, CFIUS in the 21st Century The Guardian of the Technology Revolution, examines the American and the Chinese conceptualizations of national security, and their implications on how each nation defines their grand strategies vis-à-vis one another. She is also the author of the upcoming book, Al-Hogra: an Anthology.

Eoin Wickens

Technical Research Director at HiddenLayer

Eoin Wickens is Technical Research Director at HiddenLayer, where he works as a leading researcher in securing artificial intelligence systems. He has previously worked in threat research, threat intelligence and malware reverse engineering and has been published over a dozen times, including co-authoring a book on cyber threat intelligence focusing on Cobalt Strike. Eoin has spoken at conferences such as BSides San Francisco, DEF CON AI Village, LABSCON and 44CON and proudly supports the Irish cybersecurity community as a south chapter member lead of Cyber Ireland. Eoin lives on a small island off the coast of mainland Ireland, and when he’s not out at sea, he’s thinking about how he can get back out there.

Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade

AVP of Research at SentinelLabs

Juan Andrés is AVP of Research for SentinelLabs and Distinguished Resident Fellow for Threat Intelligence at the Johns Hopkins SAIS Alperovitch Institute. Before joining SentinelOne, JAGS led multiple threat intelligence teams at Google, Chronicle, was a Principal Security Researcher at GReAT focusing on targeted attacks, and worked as Senior Cybersecurity and National Security Advisor to the Government of Ecuador. In 2023, JAGS was presented with a Presidential Volunteer Service Award for furthering U.S. cyber preparedness. His research work is the subject of two permanent exhibits at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC.

Ken Bagnall

Founder and CEO at Silent Push

Ken Bagnall is the Founder and CEO of Silent Push, the leading threat enrichment and hunting platform that allows organizations to have customized feeds relevant to themselves. Ken has an extensive track record of defending companies from cyber attacks. He is the founder of The Email Laundry, which was acquired by FireEye in 2017, where Ken then acted as Vice President of Product Management. Ken has a Cybersecurity Investment company called Phish Security that funds innovation in this sector, and sits on the advisory board of Strike Ready, a security operations platform. Ken was previously on the board of Information Security Ireland, on the executive council of CompTIA UK, and on the executive council of the EU PROTECTIVE threat intelligence project.

Madeleine Devost

Intelligence Analyst at Nisos

Madeleine Devost is an intelligence analyst at Nisos focusing on open-source investigations. Prior to Nisos, she worked as a threat intelligence and investigations consultant for a number of firms including Excivity, RiskIQ and Microsoft. Maddie was exposed to the cybersecurity community at a young age, attending her first lecture by DEF CON founder Jeff Moss at age 12 and attended her first DEF CON at age 16. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia where she studied International Relations, Arabic, and French.

Maulik Limbachiya

Director of Sales Engineering at Silent Push

Maulik Limbachiya has extensive experience in the cyber security field working with the federal government, global financials and large technology companies. He currently works as Director of Sales Engineering at Silent Push, helping companies mitigate their cyber risk by providing Indicators of Future Attack at scale. Previously, he worked on interdisciplinary teams at CrowdStrike, Recorded Future and Flashpoint providing threat intelligence and cloud security solutions for Fortune 500 companies. Maulik has a BA in business administration with a dual concentration in information systems and international business from The George Washington University.