Biography

John is an IT security professional with the ability to communicate technical concepts with all levels of leadership within an organization. With Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU), he managed and executed an information security assessment program to establish a security baseline of all 32 MnSCU institutions, providing guidance and direction to remediate gaps in system security. This then led to collaboratively developing an innovative training program, available to the 800 IT staff across MnSCU. Currently, he is improving and building out MnSCU's risk assessment and risk management capabilities, as well as teaching for the first time--ethical hacking at Inver Hills Community College. He's also previously participated in the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition as head judge for the Minnesota/Wisconsin/Iowa state competitions and the Midwest regional competitions in 2009 and 2010.

With his previous employer, John was a penetration tester, incident responder, IT auditor (primarily financial and SAS70 audits), and computer forensics investigator. He built the computer forensics practice there, which generated $500K in revenue in its first year alone.

John holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota, and currently is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and a GIAC Certified Incident Handler (GCIH).

EDUCAUSE Involvement