Tribe of Hackers Security Leaders

29David Kennedy

“Keeping people happy, making sure the culture is right, and believing that anyone is teachable are some of the main areas of focus for me.”

Twitter: @HackingDave

David Kennedy is the founder of two organizations: TrustedSec and Binary Defense Systems (BD). David is an avid gamer and father of three, and he is passionate about coding, hacking, and red teaming. David previously was a chief security officer (CSO) for a Fortune 1000 company with offices in more than 77 countries. Considered a forward thinker in the security field, he is a keynote speaker at some of the nation's largest conferences and a guest on several national news organizations. He also worked on cyber warfare for the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) and on forensics for the intelligence community, including two tours in Iraq.

Do you believe there is a massive shortage of career cybersecurity professionals?

I don't believe that the gap is as great as it's made out to be. The main problem we see is that most organizations are requiring pretty extensive career experience even for junior positions. It's difficult to come out of college or high school and immediately start a job in cybersecurity. One of the things that we've been doing at TrustedSec is selecting two to three interns per year to go through, and so far, each of the interns we've had have completely come on full-time. I think having organizations ...