Adrian Sanabria
IANS Faculty
Adrian is the Principal Researcher at The Defenders Initiative, a firm he
founded to feature and support decades of cybersecurity research. His
foundation spans technical, GRC, and leadership roles with a background as a
practitioner, incident responder, penetration tester, and PCI QSA.
As an industry analyst, studying market trends, working with founders and
investors brought a deep understanding of the business side of cybersecurity.
After Adrian’s own startup was acquired, he spent seven years helping startups
grow, market, and sell to their clients. Leaving the startup space, Adrian is
once again focused on helping practitioners solve fundamental challenges, with
or without the help of industry vendors.
Expertise
- Security Program Management
- Vulnerability Management
- Incident Response
- Penetration Testing
- Security Awareness
Achievements & Contributions
- Author and Presenter on topics that challenge conventional wisdom in the information security space
- Founder of BSides Knoxville, East Tennessee's premier cybersecurity event
- Founder of DC865, Knoxville's area DEFCON group
- Host of the Enterprise Security Weekly podcast
- Contributor to the Penetration Testing Execution Standard (PTES)
- Frequent volunteer to community efforts including the Cavalry, BioHacking DEFCON Village, Medical Device DEFCON Village, the National Board of InfoSec Examiners (NBISE), open-source data-loss prevention tools and several CIS benchmarks
- Discovers and reports many critical vulnerabilities in commercial products