Brenton House

Digital Strategist and Influencer -

Brenton House is an ex-hacker, filmmaker, developer, architect, consultant, strategist, and now Digital Evangelist. Brenton House is known for his unique creative work on several hit YouTube series such as API Cybersecurity 101, API Cookery, and Breaking the Build. As an expert Digital Strategist, Brenton currently works as Vice President for Digital Evangelism at Software AG, a global leader in the API, Integration, and IoT space.

Corey Ball

Author and Sr. Manager Pentest - Moss Adams

I am a senior manager of penetration testing consulting at Moss Adams. In addition, I am the best selling author of Hacking APIs and winner of the 2022 SANS Difference Makers Award for Book of the Year. In 2022, I helped create the APIsec University and released the API Penetration Testing course.

I have over thirteen years of experience working in IT and cybersecurity across several industries, including aerospace, agribusiness, energy, fintech, government services, and healthcare. In addition to a bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy from Sacramento State University, I hold the OSCP, CCISO, CEH, CISA, CISM, CRISC, and CGEIT industry certifications. I have had the pleasure of being the technical editor of the Kali Linux Pentest Bible (Wiley) and Black Hat GraphQL (No Starch Press).

Erez Yalon

VP of Security Research - Checkmarx

I am the Head of Security Research at Checkmarx, a global leader in application security.

In this role, I lead the company’s security research efforts, overseeing and managing three teams (in two countries) of top-notch professionals - researchers, analysts, pen-testers, secure development engineers, and bounty hunters.

Building and leading this group of experienced defenders, attackers, and security researchers is quite a challenge. Still, it brings invaluable skills and knowledge vital for maintaining Checkmarx’s top-notch vulnerability detection technology and security education platform.

I am enthusiastic about my work and believe it makes a huge difference out there.“No one will protect what they don’t care about, and no one will care about what they have never experienced” - Sir David Attenborough

While I enjoy all aspects of my job, I think my favorite part is to be able to educate and raise security awareness. This brought me to found and lead the AppSec Village as part of DEF CON, lead several OWASP projects and give talks at global events and conferences like RSAC, DEF CON, and Black Hat.

Antoine Carossio

Co-Founder & CTO - Escape

Antoine is co-founder & CTO of Escape. Antoine is a former French National Secret Agency and Apple security engineer and penetration tester.

Tristan Kalos

Co-founder and CEO - Escape

Tristan is co-founder & CEO @ Escape (GraphQL Security). He was a seasoned freelance developer and Machine Learning Researcher at UC Berkeley. He witnessed the API Security problem with his eyes while working for a customer. He saw an entire company database being stolen in 2018 through an API he developed himself.

Mike Amundsen

Author of "Design and Build Great APIs", API Strategist & Advisor - amundsen.com, Inc.

An internationally known author and speaker, Mike Amundsen consults with organizations around the world on network architecture, Web development, and the intersection of technology & society. He works with companies large and small to help them capitalize on the opportunities provided by APIs, Microservices, and Digital Transformation. Amundsen has authored numerous books and papers. He contributed to the O’Reilly book, "Continuous API Management" (2018). His "RESTful Web Clients", was published by O’Reilly in February 2017 and he co-authored "Microservice Architecture" (June 2016). His latest book — "Design and Build Great APIs" — for Pragmatic Publishing, is scheduled for release in early 2020.

Jeff Crume

Distinguished Engineer, CTO IBM Security - IBM

I am a technical executive with a PhD in Cybersecurity and a focus on security architecture for external clients.
- YouTube videos on cybersecurity with more than 3 million views
- Author of "Inside Internet Security: What Hackers Don't Want You to Know" (Addison-Wesley)
- Member of the inaugural class of the NC State University Computer Science Alumni Hall of Fame
- Contributing author to the "Information Security Management Handbook" Sixth Edition, Volume 7 (Auerbach)
- IBM Master Inventor
- Served on international assignment in Beijing
- Served as member of the NC State University Computer Science Strategic Advisory Board
- Member of the IBM Academy of Technology
- Presented at more than 100 conferences/seminars
- Over 40 years' experience in the IT industry
- Published articles on cryptography, virtual private networking, identity management, LDAP, password security and network security
- Served on editorial board for the "Information Management & Computer Security" research journal, NC State Univ Cyberlaw board, program committee for the International Network Conference
- Experience in software development as a programmer, designer and project leader
- Extensive experience in pre-sales consultative selling, security architecture development and vision setting
- Worked with clients in more than 40 countries across 6 continents

Axel Grosse

Global Head of Presales - 42Crunch

Passionate about helping customers make good decisions in an increasingly digital world.

Special Knowledge Areas:API Protection, API Security, Innovation, Growth Engineering, REST API, Async API, Access Federation, Secure Mobile Connect, Secure Cloud Architectures, Payment

Dan Barahona

Founder - APIsec University

Ankita Gupta

Co-Founder and CEO - Akto.io

Ankita is the co-founder and CEO of Akto.io. Prior to Akto she has experience working in VMware, LinkedIn and JP Morgan. She holds MBA from Dartmouth College and Bachelors in Technology from IIT Roorkee. She is a past speaker at DefCon, BlackHat and various OWASP meetups and conferences.

Mehdi Medjaoui

Founder and Chairman of Apidays Conferences, Author of Continuous API Management - Apidays

Mehdi Medjaoui is the founder of APIdays conferences series worldwide, that he started in 2012 in Paris. He is highly involved in the API community and API Industry, and is a current author, lecturer, consultant and investor in the API space. In 2011 he co-founded OAuth.io, a SaaS OAuth API middleware for OAuth integration and implementation used by 40,000+ developers, that had been acquired in December 2017. His research involves publishing the API Industry Landscape and the yearly State of Banking APIs.

Francois Lascelles

CTO - Layer7

Francois is a Distinguished Engineer and CTO for API Management at Broadcom Software. Previously, Francois was a member of the Ping Identity Office of the CTO. An early adopter of service orientation, Francois specialized in the application of security in distributed systems. Notably, Francois was the first developer at Layer 7 Technologies where he was part of a team who developed a best of breed API security gateway technology which disrupted a category, and continues to be used by hundreds of enterprises today.

Jean Burellier

Principal Engineer, Platform Team Lead - Sanofi

Being associated with the industry since 2012, I have worked as a Developer, Leader, Architect and now Principal Engineer to build, architect and improve solutions based on APIs and real time communication.

I have been thanked for my work around automation of processes allowing the companies to greatly increase the efficiency of their workflows while improving the developer experience and the quality in the final product. My colleagues know me as a good communicator who likes to use an interactive approach for understanding the requirements and solving problems of varied scope.Working with a plethora of roles - both technical and business - such as lead architect, staff engineer, project manager and CxO but also legal team I have been able to develop keen eyes for various technicalities which helped me in maximizing our products impact's for our customers.

Cody Salas

Sr Developer Advocate | Solutions Architect - Yubico

I started my career as a web developer, quickly following in love with the end to end process from designing functional user experiences, scoping application interfaces, and the deployment/building of code.

From there, I moved into an Architecture role, where I got to play with interesting cutting edge technologies in the area of Artificial Intelligence. I had the great opportunity to work directly with Microsoft, Amazon, and newer start-ups to test their technologies for their applicability in a large enterprise like ExxonMobil.

From there I transitioned to become the Product Manager of the ExxonMobil Health Applications group. In February of 2020 I asked myself "There is no way this gig could be that hectic, right?". In March 2020 the COVID pandemic swept the US, forcing us into lockdown, leaving me to help guide the team through the "pandemic year".

Nowadays I'm at Yubico, where I've been helping to create guidance targeted at developers to help make their applications more secure through the use of WebAuthn.

When not online you can find me crate digging at record shops, front row at concerts (short problems), at theaters watching classic movies, or writing self-indulgent bios.

Joni Klippert

Co-Founder and CEO - StackHawk

Joni is the CEO and co-founder of StackHawk. She has deep experience building products as a product leader in the DevOps ecosystem, including growing companies from seed through high growth and acquisition. Now, her primary focus is helping developers find and fix security bugs before they deploy to production and bringing security and developer teams together. When she's not in CEO mode, she loves to travel, try new foods, and enjoy time at home with her husband and two dogs, Q and Tokyo.

Ankush Jain

Co-Founder and CTO - Akto.io

Ankush is the co-founder & CTO at Akto (https://www.akto.io). Prior to starting Akto he worked at CleverTap as VP of Engineering. He has also worked for 5 years as a Quant at Morgan Stanley. He has acquired US patents at Microsoft and at CleverTap.

Greg Thompson

PM - Layer7

- Proven leader guiding organizations in technical direction and enabling digital transformation
- 20+ years of experience in the software industry with a strong technical background
- Deep background in digital technologies including APIs, Cloud, Microservices, and Integration
- Balance of business understanding and technical expertise enables effective consultation and decision making

Jeremy Suo-Anttila

Customer Engineer - Layer7

Globally experienced technologist that is always on the look out for the next generation of technology that is used to service the enterprise, mobile or internet based products and services. I am interested in all aspects of infrastructure from basic shared hosting to large scale automated data center design. Enjoy working with all levels of fellow technologists to solve complex issues and comfortable working with engineers or executives to build new business solutions.

As one of the founding members of Layered Tech we built the company from a 2 man operation 4+ years ago to the multimillion dollar global data center provider it is today. I have 10+ years of experience with startup's such as 3Tera, LT and others along with working at CA I have seen and experienced most everything you can when it comes to providing service and support at all levels from small local start up MSP to large scale GSP.

I have strong skills in all main stream operating systems, application architecture ( servers, DB, storage platforms, system messaging, API's, security, networking et), virtualization platforms and general data center design. Always on the look out for new ways to complete complex tasks with automation and virtualization technologies allowing us to eliminate human error allowing for higher levels of operational efficiency and overall performance.

I have 18 years of supporting global customers across a wide range of regions, time zones, cultures and customer bases from first world tier one telco providers in the US to up and coming service providers in south east Asia.

Doug Dooley

Chief Operating Officer - Data Theorem

Doug Dooley is the Chief Operating Officer of Data Theorem. He heads up product strategy, marketing, sales, and customer success teams. Before joining Data Theorem, Dooley worked in venture capital leading investments of cloud-centric security, machine-learning, and infrastructure startups for Venrock. While at Venrock, Dooley served on the boards of Evident.io (Palo Alto Networks), Niara (HPE), and VeloCloud (VMware). Prior to Venrock, Dooley spent almost two decades as an entrepreneur and technology executive at some of the most innovative and market dominant technology infrastructure companies – ranging from large corporations such as Cisco and Intel to security and virtualization startups such as Neoteris, NetScreen, and RingCube. Earlier in his career, he held various management, engineering, sales, and marketing roles at Juniper Networks, Inktomi, and Nortel Networks. Dooley earned a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Virginia Tech.

Richard Smith

Director - Data Theorem

Richard is a Director at Data Theorem. He works with security professionals and developers across different size organizations to better understand market trends and needs around mobile app security, mobile app fraud and API security. Before joining Data Theorem, Richard worked for Cisco Systems helping different organizations develop security solutions across many different areas of technology including network security, cloud security, data center security and identity management. Prior to Cisco Systems, Richard worked as an entrepreneur and technology influencer at collaboration leader TANDEBRG and virtualization startup RingCube Technologies. Richard earned a B.S. in Management Information Systems from San Jose State University.

Yossi Rifold

Head of Product Management at SAST & Engines - Checkmarx

• A decade+ of experience in designing and delivering world-class software products.
• Hands-on product development management.
• Managing the end-to-end lifecycle for products, for enterprise offerings.
• Experienced in agile methodologies for Product management.
• PRD, MRD, and technical document writing.
• Market analysis, Business cases, Product strategy, and Solution definition to multiple markets.
• Highly experienced in designing web user interfaces, and creating examples using wireframes and mock-ups (Figma, Balsamiq, Pencil).
• Manage Change Control procedures: Issue and track customer relations or additional scope and activities in the product with our internal R&D.
• Highly technical, professional, ambitious, dedication to work even in irregular hours with the US market.
• Team player, People person, and leader.
• Possess knowledge in various areas of technology, such as big data, AI, mobile devices, operating systems, monitoring solutions, etc.

Figen Ceceli

SVP, Head of Data Aggregation Product - Fidelity Investments

Multi-dimensional global executive excelling at opportunities that need definition, vision, and Lean innovation. Strong track record for "building the right thing" as well as "building it right" by innovating differentiated customer experiences, products, websites, Agile, SRE and digital transformation, SOA and cloud modernization. Expertise in large scale solutions supporting Open Banking/Open Finance, supporting API developers and eco-systems, telco, financial services, contact center, Salesforce CRM, billing, BSS, network management and digital applications. Extensive accomplishments in Lean software/product delivery, transforming teams, products and strategy in start-ups to largest global companies.

Dan Hopkins

VP of Engineering - StackHawk

Dan Hopkins is the VP of engineering at StackHawk. He has experience building engineering teams from 0 to big, managing architecture and design, and establishing evolving development processes. His personal philosophy is to develop teams first and then software. Away from the keyboard, he loves skiing, camping, playing the piano, and reading (and can provide a book reference for just about any topic). And yes, he’s a Colorado local; of course, his favorite time to be out driving is when it’s dumping powder.

Chuck Herrin

Field CISO & Customer Advocate - F5

Chuck Herrin is Field CISO & Customer Advocate at F5. He joined the company through the acquisition of Wib Security, where he held the position of CTO.

In the 20 years prior to Wib, Chuck held a variety of CISO and technology leadership roles, including EVP and CISO for Texas Capital Bank and end to end responsibility for Security, Risk, and Compliance for AIG’s Consumer Group.

Chuck is passionate about security and particularly interested in emerging threats and the rise of generative AI, microservices, and APIs in modern applications

Peter Scheffler

Sr. Cyber Security Solutions Architect - F5 API Security

Peter has over 25 years of experience in the software industry with another decade before that as an amateur programmer. Peter has spent the last 15 years in the world of web application development and application security. As an independent consultant, Peter spent time developing solutions for securing network and application access for Fortune 1000 and security conscious government organizations. Peter currently works with F5 Networks as a Cyber Security Solutions Architect where he focuses on security opportunities across North America, specializing in DDoS, SSL Intercept/Visibility and Web Application Firewall cases

Kathy Wong

Head of Product for Export Aggregation - Chase

Successful and proven leader with product vision and strong ability to lead teams to deliver on roadmaps. Extensive experience managing technology delivery specifically in building APIs and big data strategies. Excellent people and organization management skills. Top-tier consulting experience.

Currently Head of Product for Export Aggregation for Connected Banking (open banking) at Chase, leading Digital platforms across API strategy, consumer data sharing and partnerships with Third Parties and FinTechs.

Awah Teh

VP, Data Governance & Privacy Engineering - Capital One

Results-driven & strategic thinking technology executive and serial entrepreneur focused on driving innovation and industry-wide disruption while leveraging data products and big data analytics. Diverse experience and background in Fintech, AdTech, Healthcare, and Media with lived experiences in all phases of growth from seed-startup to global enterprise scale.

Danny Weitzner

Founding Director, MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative & Research Scientist - MIT

Specialties: Internet Public Policy: privacy, freedom of expression, cybersecurity, AI Policy, patents and copyright
Patents and Standards
Open source and internet standards
Semantic Web

Shekhar Sahgal

Senior Vice President Data Access, Open Banking - Mastercard

Accomplished financial services & payments executive who excels in driving strong business results through innovative product development, creative problem solving and by cultivating high performing teams. Proven track record of end-to-end execution, taking a concept from strategy through to product launch.