Tribe of Hackers Red Team

25Jeffrey Man

“My idea of a perfect red team exercise is total and utter failure coupled with early detection.”

Twitter: @MrJeffMan

Jeffrey Man is a respected information security expert, advisor, evangelist, and co-host of the security podcast Security Weekly. He has more than 35 years of experience in all aspects of computer, network, and information security. Jeffrey has held various information security roles within the DoD as well as private-sector enterprises, is a former PCI QSA, and was part of the first penetration testing red team at the NSA.

How did you get your start on a red team?

I first became involved with ethical hacking in the early 90s while working for an organization entitled the Fielded Systems Evaluation Branch within the Information Systems Security Directorate (INFOSEC) at the National Security Agency (NSA). The mission of this branch was to perform security assessments against all cryptographic and communications systems developed by the NSA and currently in use by such entities as the U.S. Armed Forces, the Department of Defense, and the Department of State. One area of focus in the branch was networked systems, and my interests gravitated toward that group because they were talking about things that I had learned about by seeing such movies as WarGames and Sneakers. We basically started learning how to hack computers and networks by targeting ...