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Profile
Justin Parker’s passion for identifying, protecting, and defending against cyber threats ignited his career in information security. He holds a master’s in cybersecurity and has more than 15 years’ experience combatting cyber criminals and analyzing threats for commercial and government organizations. Justin is currently a senior consultant at Protegas Australia, specializing in risk mitigation and combatting cybersecurity threats. He has a wealth of knowledge spanning multiple disciplines in information security. Justin is driven to understand behavior patterns of cyber threats, find solutions, and prevent future security incidents.
At SANS, Justin is a Certified Instructor Candidate and has taught the course, FOR578: Cyber Threat Intelligence. Justin has a knack for simplifying complex concepts into relatable and manageable segments for his students. Justin’s teaching approach encourages his students to analyze different components of the issue to find innovative and effective solutions. As a mentor, Justin stands out by his vast experience spanning a wide array of information security disciplines and his dedication to teaching students.
One of the most difficult concepts for students is connecting the dots from definitive technical concepts (e.g., security event logs, NetFlow traffic analysis) to more ambiguous concepts (e.g., people’s desires, geopolitics), he says. But, he adds, “handling quantitative and qualitative information effectively to produce meaningful intelligence for a customer is critical to the success of a CTI analyst.” Justin teaches as a mentor, demonstrating real-life implementation methods. He gives practical examples on how to assess and quantify critical data successfully to create effective solutions.
A goal he has for students in his class is to understand the reasons cyber security threats occur and drive towards methods that eliminate future cyber threats. Understanding the “why” has been part of the reason Justin was drawn to this field in the first place.
Justin’s cybersecurity career interests have been focused on CTI, OSINT, and Adversary Emulation. He has presented at security conferences, community events, and workshops in Australia and New Zealand. When he is not saving the world from cyber threats or educating the eager minds of students, Justin enjoys traveling, learning fun facts about space and the wonders of the sci-fi community-based game of Rimworld.