#713 WP-Tonic This Week in WordPress & SaaS We Interview Mark Elliott From The CIA To Cybersecurity & Hacking Expert

From The CIA To Cybersecurity & Hacking Expert

Mr. Elliott is CEO of Comar Cyber, Inc., a Washington, DC-based company that specializes in government and corporate training in cybersecurity. He created the award-winning “Learn by Hacking” TM online cybersecurity course, with distribution deals in the US and Japan.

Mr. Elliott served for almost two decades at the CIA, where he worked in the Directorate of Operations as a Case Officer and ops leader in field assignments.

He has extensive experience at the intersection of HUMINT operations and technology. As a manager at CIA Headquarters, he worked with companies, investors, and other elements of government to identify, purchase, and create technologies for the CIA’s operational use. He used his training and experience in assignments in Europe, South Asia, and Africa, as well as at HQS, to identify and counter nation-state cyber threats to protect enterprise and operational systems. Mr. Elliott, in coordination with various stakeholders, created the Agency’s requirements for operational technology in the foreign field.

Interview Questions

#1 - What do you see as some of the new and biggest Cybersecurity threats at the present moment?

#2 - WordPress and open-source software are not as secure as proprietary software; what are your general views on this?

#3 - What are some critical things website developers and designers need to understand to make their websites more secure?

#4 - We seem to be in an age of Surveillance Capitalism, as popularized by Shoshana Zuboff. what are your own views on this?

#5 - There has been a lot of talk TikTok about it being a significant security threat; what are your own views on this?

#6 - What are your personal views on Edward Snowden and his revelations connected to the NSA?