Ken Underhill – Cybrary

Why nominated: Ken Underhill primary mission is to be a hands on instructor using live and online cybersecurity classes to enable students to attend his classes worldwide. This is part of his core belief than people anywhere should have access to an affordable education if they wish to join the cybersecurity field.

Profile: In the last year Underhill has continuously had to recalculate the number of people he will be able to instruct. He started out with a 2018 goal to help more than 100,000 cybersecurity professionals to pass the CEH and CHFI exams. Then when he joined Cybrary in late 2018, he was able to increase this goal to more than one million students, which he was able to attain. Then for 2019 he again reset his goal to train expecting to train about five million students.

Other tasks undertaken by Underhill during the previous year was to helped Cybrary launch a “creator network” to accelerate the velocity of content growth on the online learning platform. With Underhill in a lead role Cybrary has added 1,000 hours of content on a diverse range of security topics. Additionally, he oversees the 100 instructors and 300 teaching assistants and mentors that the creator network has acquired in the past seven months.

What colleagues say: “I find his lectures and teaching style tremendously accommodating and helpful to those with a learning disability like myself. Ken successfully breaks down complex cyber security-related topics into bite- sized nuggets of gold that the average person can understand. He also focuses his courses on a hands-on, skill- based approach over a “death by PowerPoint” approach.” -Karen Vo, Penetration Tester, Graduate Student, University of Southern California

Doug Olenick