Sounil Yu is a security innovator with over 30 years of hands-on experience creating, breaking, and fixing computer and network systems. He is the creator of the Cyber Defense Matrix and the DIE Resiliency Framework, which have shaped the views of the industry, regulators, and the overall security ecosystem. He serves on the Board of Advisors of the FAIR Institute and Strategic Cyber Ventures and is an adjunct professor at George Mason University's School of Business teaching the fundamentals of Cybersecurity Technologies. He chairs the Philosophy Track for Art into Science: A Conference on Defense, where attendees discuss and define meaningful concepts in security, create practical applications of those concepts, and document them for the purposes of broader implementation.
He previously served as the Chief Security Scientist at Bank of America, leading a cross-functional team focused on driving security innovation and a thriving startup culture to meet emerging cybersecurity needs, to serve as a challenge function, and to be a change agent driving unconventional thinking and alternative approaches to hard problems in information security. Before Bank of America, he helped improve information security at several institutions spanning from Fortune 100 companies with three letters on the stock exchange to secretive three letter agencies that are not. He also created and led a nationally recognized intern program with over 300+ students to create new capabilities and tackle tough challenges in cybersecurity.
He has 22 granted patents covering a wide range of topics, including threat modeling, graph databases, intrusion deception, endpoint security monitoring, tracking media leaks, attributing malicious requests, attributing devices to organizations, detecting logic bombs, security portfolio optimization, and neutralizing stolen files. In addition to CISSP and GSEC certifications, Sounil holds a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech and bachelor's degrees in Electrical Engineering and Economics from Duke University.
