Zakery Stufflebeam

Zakery Stufflebeam is a Director of Cybersecurity, SOC Operations at a publicly traded insurance company serving first responders, educators, and regulated financial and healthcare markets. He leads incident response, detection engineering, and operational strategy for a tierless security operations center, overseeing internal analysts alongside a 24/7 managed detection and response partner.

Zakery is a leader in the USAF as well as a cybersecurity officer,  where he leads innovations for cybersecurity strategic mission development. Zakery trains and teaches the next generation of cybersecurity Air National Guard members to prepare for new threats.

With experience across both offensive and defensive security, Zakery brings a practitioner’s mindset to building resilient, real-world security operations. He has designed and scaled multiple SOCs, led complex investigations involving ransomware, identity compromise, and data exfiltration, and consistently focuses on reducing risk through visibility, automation, and disciplined process rather than excessive tooling. His technical expertise spans SIEM and SOAR platforms, EDR, identity systems, email and DNS security, and data protection technologies, enabling him to convert threat intelligence into actionable detection and response workflows.

In addition to his enterprise leadership role, Zakery operates an independent cybersecurity consulting practice, advising organizations on SOC design, threat detection strategy, incident response readiness, and automation. His consulting work emphasizes practical, defensible security programs that withstand real adversaries and regulatory scrutiny, particularly within insurance, healthcare, and financial services.

Zakery is also an educator and content creator focused on developing security professionals through hands-on training, long-form technical instruction, and realistic simulations. He is currently a participant in the SANS Instructor Program, working toward certification as a SANS instructor. His teaching philosophy centers on helping practitioners understand not only how to respond to threats, but why specific detection, response, and automation strategies succeed at scale.

Across leadership, consulting, and education, Zakery’s work is guided by a single principle: strong process, informed leadership, and purposeful automation are the foundation of a modern, resilient security operations program.