Our Bloggers

• Edward A. Adams, President & CEO
• Jason Taylor, CTO
• Joe Basirico, Director of Security Services
• John Kirkwood, Former CISO & Chief Security Strategist
• Danny Harris, Senior Security Consultant

Ed A. Adams - President & CEO

 Ed Adams is a software executive with  successful leadership experience in  various-sized organizations that serve the IT security and quality assurance industries. As CEO, Mr. Adams applies his security and business skills, as well as his pervasive industry experience in the software quality space, to direct application security experts to help organizations understand the risks in their software systems and develop programs to mitigate those risks. The company has delivered high-quality risk solutions to the most recognizable companies in the world including Microsoft, IBM, Fedex, ING, Sony, Nationwide and HP.

Mr. Adams founded the Application Security Industry Consortium, Inc. (AppSIC), a non-profit association of industry analysts, enterprise technologists, and security leaders established to define cross-industry application security metrics and best practices. The non-profit eventually morphed into SAFECode at which point Mr. Adams got more engaged with other industry initiatives, including OWASP. Mr. Adams is on the board of the National Association of Information Security Groups (NAISG) as well as the Massachusetts North Shore Technology Council (NSTC.)

No stranger to the podium, Mr. Adams has presented to thousands at numerous seminars, software industry conferences, and private companies. He has contributed written and oral commentary for business and technology media outlets such as New England Cable News, CSO Magazine, SC Magazine, CIO Update, Investor’s Business Daily, Optimize and CFO Magazine. Mr. Adams is in the process of co-writing a book titled “Winning Cyber War”, which will be published by Jones & Bartlett, and is authoring his own title, “Application Security Maturity” – both due out in 2012. He can be followed on Twitter.

Mr. Adams earned his MBA degree with honors from Boston College and has B.A. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and English Literature from the University of Massachusetts.

Jason Taylor - Chief Technology Officer

Mr. Taylor leads the strategic direction for all technology initiatives and manages world-class development teams for the company's product lines. He has spent his career focused on application development and testing with a primary focus on application security. His unrivaled understanding of application behavior provided the impetus for Security Innovation’s industry pioneering fault injection tool, Holodeck Enterprise Edition, and critical enhancements to the company’s internal testing and development tools. Mr. Taylor was the visionary and designer of the Company’s “Creating Secure Code” methodology and course which has been taught to several of the world's largest technology organizations.

Prior to joining Security Innovation, Mr. Taylor served as test architect, security lead and development manager at Microsoft for various releases of Internet Explorer and Windows. He was the first member of the Internet Explorer security test team, and as the security team lead, he grew it from a solitary operation to the leading application security test team at Microsoft. Later, he built the Test Model Toolkit which became the standard model-based testing tool at Microsoft, winning a Best Practice Award along the way.

Mr. Taylor is an external reviewer, contributor and primary author for Microsoft patterns & practices security guidance. He has published several whitepapers including “Web Services Risk Assessment and Recommendations” and “Security Threats: Risks, Protection & Limitations" for CIO Update. He is co-author of "Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server" and “Improving Web Services Security” with J.D. Meier of Microsoft. Mr. Taylor received his C.S. degree from Montana State University.

Joe Basirico - Director of Security Services

Joe leverages his unique experience as a development lead, trainer, researcher, and test engineer to lead the security engineering team in their delivery of high-quality, impactful assessment and remediation solutions to the company’s customers. His ability to blend his technical skills with risk-based contextual analysis and unwavering customer commitment makes him an invaluable asset for each Security Innovation client.

Joe has spent most the majority of his professional career analyzing application behavior, understanding application threats and developing tools and methodologies that assist in the discovery and removal of application security problems. To keep his technical skills honed, Joe participates in SDLC process assessments and security engineering activities such as security design and code reviews, threat modeling, and application penetration testing.

Joe’s deep knowledge of application risk, coupled with his hands-on experience assessing a plethora of commercial software, makes him a trusted advisor for customers and is often a “go to” resource for specialized training and critical consulting services. He has worked on projects directly for Microsoft, Symantec, OWASP, HP, US Courts, and many others during his 8+ year tenure with the company.

Joe is an active member in the security and open-source communities, having contributed technology, training, utilities, expertise and methodologies. He manages the company’s engineering blog and has written several publications that focus on vulnerabilities at the source code level. Joe holds a B.S in Computer Science from Montana State University.

Danny Harris - Senior Security Consultant

Threat Trends is led by Danny Harris, an experienced InfoSec and AppSec expert whose experience ranges from a Senior Security Consultant at Security Innovation, to an Information Security officer at Aon, to an adjunct professor at Wilbur Wright College. This unique experience allows Danny to view threats from all angles and provide regular commentary on meaningful events, news, breaches, and measures organizations can take to protect themselves. To get the most relevant and specialized perspective, Mr. Harris solicits key insight and analysis from other Security Innovation engineers and industry experts.