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Ron Taylor

Omar Santos is a principal engineer in the Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) within Cisco’s Security Research and Operations. He mentors and leads engineers and incident managers during the investigation and resolution of security vulnerabilities in all Cisco products, including cloud services. Omar has been working with information technology and cybersecurity since the mid-1990s. He has designed, implemented, and supported numerous secure networks for Fortune 100 and 500 companies and the U.S. government. Prior to his current role, he was a technical leader within the Worldwide Security Practice and the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC), where he taught, led, and mentored many engineers within both organizations.


Omar is an active member of the security community, where he leads several industrywide initiatives and standards bodies. His active role helps businesses, academic institutions, state and local law enforcement agencies, and other participants that are dedicated to increasing the security of the critical infrastructure. Omar often delivers technical presentations at many cybersecurity conferences. He is the author of more than 20 books and video courses. You can follow Omar on any of the following:

Ron Taylor has been in the information security field for almost 20 years, 10 of which were spent in consulting. In 2008, he joined the Cisco Global Certification Team as an SME in information assurance. In 2012, he moved into a position with the Security Research & Operations group, where his focus was mostly on penetration testing of Cisco products and services. He was also involved in developing and presenting security training to internal development and test teams globally. In addition, he provided consulting support to many product teams as an SME on product security testing. He then spent some time as a consulting systems engineer specializing in Cisco’s security product line. In his current role, he works in the Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT). He has held a number of industry certifications, including GPEN, GWEB, GCIA, GCIH, GWAPT, RHCE, CCSP, CCNA, CISSP, and MCSE. Ron is also a Cisco Security Blackbelt, SANS mentor, cofounder and president of the Raleigh BSides Security Conference, and an active member of the Packet Hacking Village team at Defcon.


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