Cleaning messy clickstream data using statistical methods. Enriching said recently-cleaned data with more, useful data (that often also need cleaned) and then behavioral modeling and developing useful metrics to gain a holistic picture of how we can help our members, customers, and stakeholders. I’m always looking for the nexus of data science approaches that help all of the above.

I am the director of a very small, very capable, very flat security data analytics team at Aetna. Our team solves security and business problems for the Global Security organization through big data analysis, bespoke data science solutions, data enablement and advanced threat detection.

Built out an AIaaS program and looking through amazing data for interesting things using computers, math, eyeballs, and sloppy code. Built a data lake & analytics platform and (as always) evangelized the power of data to answer interesting questions.

Team lead on a large (multiple TB/day), distributed Splunk implementation. Successfully operationalizing data science output in a high-stakes cybersecurity environment. Working feverishly to speed up the iteration cycles of innovative solutions at the nexus of data, science, security and programming. Talking to a lot of people about said solutions, and searching for more elegant solutions that work at scale.

Developed a strong and scaled security analytics program. We used some pretty amazing tools, including R, Splunk, Palantir, Tableau, Hadoop, and various NoSQL's. We spent a lot of time looking through a lot of data, which is awesome.

Worked with the rocket team that sends sounding rockets just above the atmosphere to take ultraviolet data of the interstellar gas. The work here was primarily hardware related, focusing on clean-room procedures, vacuum tank operations, hardware assembly, machining and disaster recover. There was also a little opportunity for some software work, but it was mostly centered around vacuum-safe hardware and optics assembly, electronics and testing.

Using ridiculously large amounts of spacecraft data, we performed a statistical analysis of Flux Transfer Events (FTE) along the flanks of the Earth's magnetopause in areas of intense Kelvin-Helmholtz activity. The results involved mining aggregate data and modeling and using the aggregate results to perform statistical analysis. The code was written in Matlab and IDL, and I am currently in the process of re-writing the code in python for public web access and greater scalability.

I went back to school to finish my BA in Astrophysics in 2008. It was a very unique experience. I even had the opportunity to participate in some useful scientific research through fantastic programs like the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) and the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). Thanks to the astrophysics research I worked on at CU and my years of working with world-class security teams, I am now very well suited to work in data analytics and related big data fields.

Penetration testing, business continuity, security infrastructure assessment, disaster recovery, security policy development and security education.

Had the unique opportunity to build a relatively well-funded security program from the ground-up, which included both tech and non-tech controls. This included policy development, training, hardware / software implementation, SIEM, auditing, forensics and compliance. You name it, we did it. This was a great project and we were very successful. I worked with a world-class team of technical professionals who really kicked ass when it came to getting the job done. I was proud to be a part of that, and I still count many of my ex-colleagues as work contacts and friends..

I was a security consultant for CIBER Global Security Practice. In that role, I did some managed IPS / IDS service, a lot of network, host and application security testing, and tons of compliance and policy reviews. I was also often responsible for reporting the results of our assessments to C-level business leadership personnel. I also did a significant amount of physical security testing and social engineering for security controls evaluation and security training readiness assessment.During my work here, I held a DoD Secret clearance, was CISSP certified and became an ISO 27001 Certified Lead Auditor. We worked with many government, private sector and educational institutions.

I worked a 2 year contract for INS / Department of Homeland Security to migrate technology infrastructure to a central environment. I managed a small team of driven, innovative developers and IT folks who were hell-bent on being successful in an incredibly process-heavy environment (you know-- the US Government.) My team's primary accomplishment during this time was to research and create a centralized structured data store for US Border Patrol data that was previously inaccessible and unstructured. We successfully built a product from the ground up that allowed secure access to secure data and supported the requirements that the DHS-ICE organization had basically given up on (but were extremely important.) When the project was complete and there wasn't much win left on the radar, I left for another cool, innovative project (Mercury Companies).

Enspherics sold boutique security solutions for all kinds of clients, large and small. We did application penetration testing, network pen testing (kind of my strong suit at the time,) security awareness testing, social engineering awareness projects, outreach and education projects, compliance and policy projects, incident response projects, remediation projects, and the occasional "my-linux-admin-just-quit-and-changed-all-the-passwords-can-you-hack-in-and-help?" projects. The answer was always yes at Enspherics; We did help.

Rhythms had a high turnover rate during the dot com boom. This resulted in hundreds of IT specialists -- each with their own strong opinions about technology -- touching thousands of servers perhaps dozens of times per server. The result of this mad approach to IT administration is that just about everything broke... all the time. When our Raptor firewall didn't stop a Code Red virus and we were losing critical provisioning capability on our Windows NT 4.0 servers, they called me (that entire sentence should make many of you cringe.) It was my job to discover what was wrong, fix it, or get the people who could fix it talking so we could figure it out together.Rhythms was a great company to work for and very fun, but my biggest accomplishment while at Rhythms was the CounterStrike server I ran on a spare Linux box I had using the free 7MB/1MB DSL connection that came free with the job. I wasn't actually that good at CounterStrike, but with the lowest latency on the server, I quickly became known as a "good" player and got recruited into a clan who went on to win the regional quarterfinals. Thanks, Rhythms!(Disclaimer: I'm just joking about the CounterStrike thing. There are no quarterfinals for CS, and I was never actually considered a "good" player... even with the latency edge. I know... sad. I did, however, run a Linux CS server and I did have a wicked-fast DSL connection when most gamers were still using ISDN. The Telecom years were fun.)