Bio
Niyo “Little Thunder” Pearson has been a leading SCADA/OT/ICS subject matter expert in multiple critical infrastructure sectors (financial, energy and water/waste water) over the past 10 years. He has a wide range of expertise and experience including cyber operations (adaptive defense and red teaming), threat hunting for nation state and state sponsored campaign activity, security orchestration & automation and physical security. Over the past 7 years, he developed an adversarial cyber defense program, with specific focuses on attack path lifecycles, adaptive cyber defense and internal network cyber offensive capabilities, which has been used to defend one of the largest natural gas utilities in the US.
In the last 4 years, he has split his time between running the Cybersecurity and OT Cybersecurity program at the utility. He has also provided guidance and alignment to SCADA/OT cybersecurity research and development technology efforts so they can be brought to market with a focus on the US critical infrastructure sectors.
Part of his experience includes leading incident response for American Express, where in 2011 he co-developed the first security orchestration and automation incident response platform used by American Express. Prior experience included his role as a global wireless subject matter expert for SonicWALL (prior to the DELL acquisition), helping to influence the wireless firmware and hardware development to bolster their wireless products.