Meet the CEO

Angelo, you have been HNP CEO for more than over a year now. What were your goals when you started and did you achieve them?

First of all let me confess that it seems really incredible to me that a year has already gone by. I took over the CEO position for the Honeynet Project from Christian Seifert more than a year ago and at times the role appeared quite intimidating to me. Christian and Honeynet Project founder Lance Spitzner did an awesome job of driving the organization
during the past few years and I used to think that walking in their footsteps would have not been that simple. Fortunately I receive a great amount of support from both of them to this day, as well great support from the Project Board of Directors, Officers and by all our members. I have to say that I am really proud to hold this role.

When I started my first goal was to understand the inner details of the organization. I realized that members are often not aware of a lot of the sometimes not so exciting stuff which happens behind the scenes to make the Project a successful organization . After one year as CEO, I have to say I feel more comfortable with the details of running the
Honeynet Project. I would say that getting to know the current situation is the most important thing you should do before trying to imagine the future for an organization.

What are your future ambitions as CEO and for the HNP?

HNP is growing at an incredible rate with people inquiring to join the organization almost daily. This requires the organization to be able to adapt to such changes and this is a great challenge. For instance, sharing information is a lot more complex when there are hundreds of persons involved across many countries and languages. We have already
started working on ways to better organize how members communicate daily with each other and share information. In my opinion this is a really key effort and could potentially dramatically improve effectiveness of the organization. Facilitating better communication and information sharing encourages more cooperation and engagement and thus makes the organization better at achieving its goals.

How do you find balance between your day job, your “Thug” project and your role as CEO?

I have found that caffeine is the best solution.

Do you sleep?

Probably it will sound as something you already heard but caffeine works best here as well.

What are your thoughts on the fact that we are getting more and more request for information from students?

I am really glad to see more and more interest in our activities from university students. I strongly believe we should motivate and help new generations grow in terms of their awareness of information security issues and mature through professionalism. When I first started learning about computer and network security just a few resources were available
to me. Not all of these were great resources of course, but I could always count on a few important references which basically helped me a lot . Nowadays new generations are overwhelmed by the huge amount of information available in the field and understanding what is important is turning out to be extremely difficult for youngest people. Our mission is to share the lessons learned in order to raise awareness and to help interested people in building their own brand of
professionalism. Having the Honeynet Project be a valuable reference for this new generation is one of the most important things we should spend more time and efforts on.

Who should come to the workshop? Will you be there?

I never missed a workshop since the time I joined HNP and I will positively be at the next workshop in Stavanger! Everyone interested in information security should consider attending the Honeynet Project annual workshop which will take place in Stavanger in May 2015. Each year the workshop brings together top information security experts from around the globe to present their latest research efforts and discuss insights and strategies to combat new threats. Moreover, the HNP people are really friendly and approachable. This means that participating in the workshop is always a great experience. Last but not least Stavanger is a really awesome city to spend some time in. I just see benefits in attending this year’s workshop, don’t you? I hope to see many of you there.