Content

Threat Seeker – Darren Anstee

Category: Threat Seeker

Name: Darren Anstee

Title: Chief Technology Officer

Company: Arbor Networks

Why nominated: Anstee's creation of ATLAS, a threat monitoring infrastructure that collects data from 400 network operators that handle about one-third of all internet traffic with a focus on tracking DDoS attacks.

Profile: Darren Anstee joined Arbor Networks 14 years ago where he started out in a pre-sales position and worked his way to CTO taking time out to build the ATLAS threat monitoring system. Something so useful that Google uses it to plot DDoS attacks worldwide in real time.

Through ATLAS and other projects Anstee has spent a great deal of time and effort not only tracking and mitigating cyberattacks, but also helping dissect how they operate and compromise Internet of Things devices. This includes setting up a network of honeypots around the world within the cloud to study IoT botnets. During the huge IoT botnet attack in October 2016 the network was able to determine that South America and APAC were being hit the hardest. This led Anstee to believe that the botnet army was targeting devices that patches for some IoT vulnerabilities that were only made to English language versions of software.

Anstee's insight in this instance is critical for network operators to understand the risk posture of their organization, and for lawmakers and regulators who are urgently examining IoT security vulnerabilities and potential fixes.

What colleagues say: “Darren is a person with deep technical insights that have strengthened our business and helped more than a thousand businesses secure their networks from availability threats like denial of service attacks. His ability to fuse technical and business insights has had a meaningful impact on our customers, and is a main reason why the world's largest networks have been with us for more than a decade.

[General] Colin Powell has a quote on great leaders that I think applies to Darren, ‘Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.'”

- Chris Gaebler, Chief Marketing Officer, Arbor Networks

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