While global industries struggle to fight against the increased community of hackers and threat actors, cybersecurity experts and influencers are in high demand to provide companies with data and cloud security insights.
Here are our top picks of cybersecurity experts who we trust can make a difference.
Brian Krebs
(315.7K Twitter followers)
With over 1,300 blog posts for the Security Fix blog, hundreds of stories for The Washington Post, and two-decade worth of cybercrime stories on KrebsOnSecurity, Krebs has been on a mission to make important computer security issues understandable. His interest in cybersecurity was rooted in 2001 when his home network was overrun by a Chinese hacking group. From a reporter and a cybersecurity expert, he also became a popular author after publishing a New York Times bestseller, Spam Nation.
Bruce Schneier
(135.9K Twitter followers)
A public-interest technologist is a fellow at the Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard University, a lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation AccessNow and the Tor Project; the Chief of Security Architecture at Inrupt, Inc., and an Advisory Board Member of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre and VerifiedVoting.org. Schneier also testified before the US Congress and appeared as a guest speaker on television and radio. Rightly so, he was titled the ‘Security Guru’ by the Economist. He shares his cybersecurity expertise on his blog since 2004 and in a monthly newsletter since 1998.
Daniel Miessler
(115.6K Twitter followers)
With over 20 years of experience, Miessler is a renowned cybersecurity expert and writer. Born in Silicon Valley, he works with several top global companies. He maintains an IT blog that consists of over 2,500 essays, articles, and tutorials. A security leader, he spends his time reading three to six books on security, technology and society every month. Every Monday, he sends a list of the best content he has come across to around 50,000 people.
Dario V Forte
A technology and cybersecurity entrepreneur, Forte holds five US software patents and has co-edited three ISO Standards as well. He has spent 15 years in Cyber and Organised Crime Enforcement and has worked with NASA and other federal agencies. With his information security strategies, he undertakes incident management and digital investigations and advises over 150 companies. A senior member of the Advisory Board of Clementy Asset Management LP, he offers his expertise on cyber risks, technology and other security issues.
Eugene Kaspersky
(183.6K Twitter followers)
Kaspersky has been fighting cyberattacks for over 30 years. Co-founder and CEO of his eponymous cybersecurity firm, he began his cybersecurity career by accident when his computer was infected by Cascade in 1989. He analysed the encrypted virus and soon developed a removal tool by himself. With a newfound passion, he indulged in defensive technology. In 1990, he created the successful AVP toolkit with other like-minded researchers and soon, Kaspersky was launched. Kaspersky regularly gives cybersecurity lectures at universities, global conferences, and through it all, he finds time to travel and document his expeditions on his blog.
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Graham Cluley
(103.8K Twitter followers)
The award-winning security blogger, researcher, podcaster, and public speaker had earned his name since the 1990s when he worked as a programmer. When he wrote his first-ever version of Dr Solomon’s Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, he was destined to become a cybersecurity expert. He has worked with Sophos and McAfee. In 2011, he was inducted into the InfoSecurity Europe Hall of Fame. Cluely has delivered speeches on computer security for global brands and has helped law enforcement agencies in cyberattack investigations. You can listen to Cluley’s expertise during his podcast, @SmashinSecurity.
Katie Moussouris
(105.8K Twitter followers)
She was a hacker of computers, now a hacker of policy and regulations. Moussouris educates companies and governments on the benefits of hacking and security research to make the internet safer. She helped the US Department of Defence start the government’s first bug bounty program, called “Hack the Pentagon.” A subject matter expert for the US National Body of the International Standards Organisation, she has advised them on vulnerability disclosure, handling processes, and security development. A popular authority on vulnerability disclosure, Moussouris is the founder of Luta Security that helps organisations work with hackers to better defend themselves from threat actors.
Kevin Mitnick
(261K Twitter followers)
He was once the FBI’s Most Wanted because he hacked into 40 major corporations just because he could. Today, he is known as a trusted security consultant for Fortune 500 companies and governments worldwide. With a 100 per cent track record of being able to penetrate any security system anywhere in the world with his Global Ghost Team, Mitnick’s security insights are highly sought after and have led him to be a commentator, security analyst, or a guest speaker on CNN, CNBC, FOX News, BBC, and 60 Minutes, to name a few. He is also the author of several books, including ‘Art of Intrusion: The Real Story Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers’ and ‘Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security’, which are mandatory readings for security professionals.
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Mikko Hypponen
(212.6K Twitter followers)
He was the first to warn the world about the Sasser outbreak and classify briefings on the Stuxnet worm operation. A world-class cybersecurity expert, Hypponen has offered his expertise to law enforcement in the US, Europe, and Asia on cybercrime investigations, since the 1990s. The Chief Research Officer of F-Secure was also a guest lecturer at the universities of Stanford and Cambridge. From publishing for leading newspapers and magazines, including New York Times, Wired, and Scientific America, Hypponen has also been a speaker at TED, Black Hat, and DEF CON.
Robert Herjavec 
(824.1K Twitter followers)
Born in Eastern Europe, a young boy travelled to North America on a boat after escaping communism in the former Yugoslavia. He delivered newspapers and waited tables before launching a computer company from his basement. Little did he know that he would become a globally renowned influencer in the years to come. Today, best known for his appearance as one of the leading sharks on ABC’s Shark Tank, Herjavec is recognised as a global cybersecurity operations leader. He also founded Herjavec Group in 2003 that became North America’s fastest-growing technology company that specialises in managed security services, incident response compliance, and remediation efforts.
Troy Hunt
(191.4K Twitter followers)
Recognised by Microsoft as a Most Valuable professional, Hunt is a cybersecurity expert who testified before the US Congress on the impact of data breaches a few years ago. A Pluralsight Information Security author and Instructor who specialises in online security and cloud development, Hunt also created the data breach aggregation service known as “Have I Been Pwned”. He can regularly be found speaking at conferences worldwide and runs workshops on building more secure software within organisations.
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Exploring Cybersecurity Experts in the Middle East
Abeer Khedr
She was named among the Top 100 Global CISOs for 2020. Khedr is the Information Security Director at the National Bank of Egypt with more than 20 years of experience in technology and information security fields. Recognised as one of Egypt’s most influential women in 2019, Khedr was further recognised as a top regional government security leader in the Middle East by the Dubai CISO Council. Before NBE, she was leading the ITR service at Deloitte, Egypt.
Haider Pasha
He is the chief security officer for emerging markets at Palo Alto Networks. Before this, he was the Chief Technology Officer for Emerging Markets at Symantec and has spent 14 years at Cisco Systems. In Dubai, he offered his technical expertise to help secure important data centres of the industry. Pasha dedicates his success to bind advanced technical concepts to commercial, people and process requirements while maintaining a balanced perspective with the business objective in mind.
Dr.Reem Faraj AlShammari
A founding partner of Women in CyberSecurtiy Middle East Group, AlShammari is well-known as a global thought leader in cybersecurity and technology in the energy sector. With interesting perspectives of a hybrid toolkit of technical and managerial understandings, AlShammari has led significant changes to the overall cybersecurity maturity in the energy sector linked to Kuwait’s national cybersecurity. She was recognised as the Digital Transformation Leader in Kuwait Oil Company of “Corporate Solutions and Digital Oil Fields.”
