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As Gray Hat's founder, what
was your motivation in starting the company?
A few years ago, I
perceived a
huge gap between the abilities of black and white hat
hackers, and realized that the
good guys were fighting a losing
battle. While the top two percent of the black hat hackers
natively understood
how to innovate at the machine code
and system levels, the white hat consultants were woefully
lacking in comparison. My goal in
starting Gray Hat Research was to
employ the deep
technical skills, aggressive mindset,
tools and techniques of a black hat hacker - the cutting
edge components of their world - to
beat them at their own game. The key to this strategy was to
build a team with morals and expertise that could
successfully defeat hackers, the
"best" of whom often work alone.
There was
just one problem. High
salaries are typically required to acquire
the expertise
necessary to
close the gap between the
worlds of black and white. I knew that if I
could find, attract
and reward the right caliber of top
notch experts, empowering and
challenging them at the same time, it would
be easy to use such
expertise as a springboard for my other
passions: educating
and and teaching, artificial
intelligence, robotics, and a host of other interests in
science and technology. The strategy was simple: provide
exceptional cyber
security services
that fund the company's
research and development efforts and
provide an additional outlet of creativity and invention to
motivate and empower our top-notch
experts.
Describe the
journey from a "one
man show" to a corporation.
The addition of every team member
to
date has been a big contributor to
this. Everything is going according to
plan. In fact, we are ahead of target. The
addition of our secure
underground datacenter in
late April pushed
us ahead exponentially. The addition of John Kiser as
our highly experienced CEO
allowed me to return to my original vision of
pursuing innovations in science, technology, and information
technology.
In a short period of time, we fully expect to
ramp up our Research and Development practice, which will
put the "R" into Gray
Hat Research with a passion.
In the Information
Technology field alone, we have 20
immediately patentable ideas and
even some working invention prototypes .
All the while, our mastery of cyber
security related subject
matter has not changed. We've added a number of capabilities
in the area of managed services and training, while
continuing to prove ourselves to be the best in the
industry. Highly
qualified experts with deep experience are
coming to us in ever increasing
numbers, asking us if we are hiring. We are a clearly
a desirable employer in
the industry.
You have a unique hiring
process.
Every
sizeable company
contains at
least some component of the top 1% of
all the brilliant people in the world. These are the people
we specialize
in attracting and employing .
Often they come to us because they are tired of making
millions for their employers, only
to fail to receive a
proportionate reward in return for their work.
Our key is
understanding what motivates each individual who lives in
the top 1% of their field.
Sometimes the reward is monetary, but many times these
brilliant individuals are simply hungry
for more challenging work or a greater sense of appreciation
and respect for their capabilities. We provide all of these
and
more in in orders of magnitude that are equal
to the impact of the innovation.
Our highly
technical and
psychological
recruitment process quantifies where people
are, and helps us recognize where
they could be and
what they could do if they were given
the opportunity to truly excel. When people say they want to
work for us, we take them through a rigorous examination
that on
average only
0.1% -one
in a thousand certified engineers - can complete successfully. The process applies an
adaptive technical measurement and a psychological profiling
component that measures not
only what they know, but why they have that information, and
how they acquired it. From
this we are able to draw a clear picture of their strengths
and weaknesses, where they are most likely to succeed and
where they will fail. Frequently our candidates learn
things about themselves they never knew and become empowered
with a passion to succeed.
Our interview
process is a natural one that gives the employee the impetus
to succeed if they are hired. We excel not only at finding
the exceptional talent, but we are proficient at providing
an environment that challenges the most brilliant
personalities and pushes them to the edge of their
capabilities.
How does this effect the
work environment?
Our employees experience the opportunity to
contribute and to learn at a level that is foreign to other
security
related businesses and
American business in general. Our
company culture demands continuous growth and improvement on
the part of the individual, and offers them exposure to
areas of science and technology that they've not had access
to previously. Rather than confining employees to a specific
training regimen, we tell them the world is their oyster -
to go mine the pearls. We've worked to create a center for
professional development that attracts the best and the
brightest. We lend our credibility and confidence to people
of equal competence and responsibility.
This approach provides us with an unlimited source of
talent
, and the side effect of drastically reducing
the capability of our competition to respond. There
is relatively
little our competitors can do about it
culturally. The effort required for them to make the
necessary cultural changes
to match
what we do will
take them years
to implement successfully, if ever .
Additionally, most executives are too comfortable with the
sizeable returns they're getting off the genius of their top people.
This sounds like the
voice of experience.
I know what it is like to be responsible for a
series of breakthrough innovations in a particular field and
receive a 2% raise while the Board of Directors hands down
huge stock packages to the executive team with little
or no
recognition for those
who made their success possible.
Rather than dwell on the negative,
I chose to create an
environment that fights the injustice of this paradigm. We
acknowledge that this is a business we're running, but we
are committed to doing the right thing for the right reason.
We're dealing with real people - both employees and
customers - who have real needs that must be addressed. This
is the priority and focus of our business model.
Are you more about the
people or the technology?
I am about realizing a personal vision and
helping others realize theirs as well. I am an enthusiastic
student of all things scientific and technological. But I'm
also an unabashed family man. No matter how rewarding my
work is, I have the knowledge that my family, my church, and
God will be with me in the highs and lows. Everything I do
is an exciting means to end. The more I have, the more I can
give away. It's trite, but it's true. I work so I can live,
not the other way around. If my heart is to just make money,
then I've failed, because I'm doing something to others that
I don't want done to me. That isn't the life God created me
to live.
What causes you to be so
vocal about your faith?
I believe God is responsible for every
breakthrough I've ever had, both professionally and
personally. He only gets the credit for my success if I'm
willing to give it to Him. Every member of the executive
team shares this conviction. I
would say that's one of our strongest distinguishing
characteristics.
What are Gray Hat's
distinguishing characteristics in the area of research?
When it comes to developing proprietary technologies, most
companies don't understand security the way we do: the
necessary refinements that go into positioning a product in
the market with features that are more than adequate and
extremely hardened. They also don't possess the depth of
technical
expertise we have in the areas of
Secret and Top Secret government applications and
theoretical and practical R&D across
a diverse variety of science and technology fields.
And
in every research project we conduct, hard core security is
our first, last and foremost driver. We specialize in both
predicting and detecting a software
or hardware product's vulnerabilities
years before
hackers will,
while getting the product to market both faster
and at a reduced cost in comparison to many R&D companies.
We're also one of the few companies who will reduce their
fees in return for a royalty interest in the product.
In
short, we're fast, we're lean and we're hungry. Over
the next couple of years we've made it our goal to dominate
the enterprise strategic security space on a nationwide scale and start the process of expanding
internationally.
What is on the horizon
for Gray Hat Research?
We have a lot of people watching us right now.
We've received a lot of encouragement from avid supporters:
customers, investors and key people in industry who
are becoming aware
of what we do. We're also conscious of the fact that our
competitors are keeping an eye on us. While the
latter component is relatively silent at present ,
there is
a growing sense of
anticipation that is building around us as people
wonder what in
the world are we are going to do next.
In preview, we
have a number of
very interesting,
compelling
and
significant
developments in the works right
now. In a short period of time, I predict both
our supporters and competitors alike
will be amazed at what Gray
Hat Research
is accomplishing. There are a
number of upcoming
developments which I can't yet
discuss. At this point, all I can say is - stay
tuned, the best is
truly yet
to come!
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biography ... |
