A U.S. Navy Veteran, Mr. Drew Williams began as a Defense Information specialist, covering Soviet ship movements in the Indian Ocean between 1979 and 1982.
He launched one of the IT Security industry’s first Host Intrusion Detection systems (HIDS), one of the first leading SIEM tools, and co-developed one of the first Security Services/Hacker Research teams (Symantec SWAT). He was on the original team that transitioned the former Kennedy Kassebaum Act into what we now know, as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, was part of the core development team alongside MITRE to establish the CVE reference system and was part of the acquisition team that established Symantec as a global cybersecurity organization.
He helped establish the OpSec security alliance with Check Point Software Technologies, established the Center for Policy and Compliance for VMWare and designed post-graduate degree programs in Cyber Security for several Universities in the US and Southeast Asia.
He is a published author of 8 books and a most-in-demand speaker on information security and has presented on cyber security throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. A former host of Hacker Halted Asia, and first principal funding source for the Black Hat Briefings, Drew takes the subject of “securing everyone for a safer world” to heart.
He has a master’s degree in Homeland Security Leadership from the George Washington University, where he graduated magna cum laude, and an undergraduate in technical communications from Brigham Young University.
But, to him, his biggest accomplishment are his six daughters and eight granddaughters. Drew lives outside Boise, Idaho with his wife, Sallie.