JJ Cummings: The art of controlling information
Welcome to the second episode of Humans of Talos, our ongoing video interview series that celebrates the people powering Cisco’s threat intelligence efforts. In each episode, we dive deep into the personal journeys, motivations and lessons learned from the team members who help keep the internet safe. This episode, let’s meet JJ Cummings, who leads our Threat Intelligence and Interdiction team, focusing on nation-state security and intelligence. Read (or watch) on for JJ’s story, his thoughts on burnout and motivation, and advice for anyone looking to join Talos.
Amy Ciminnisi: Hello and welcome to the second episode of Humans of Talos. I’m here with JJ Cummings today, who leads a team on our Threat Intelligence and Interdiction team, focused on nation state security and intelligence matters. What led you to your role at Talos?
JJ Cummings: Prior to Talos’ formal formation, or creation, I was a part of the Sourcefire acquisition, and I was a part of Sourcefire for many years. We helped with deep investigations and analysis and incident response and threat hunting. Then that moved into the Cisco world when Cisco acquired us. We determined that there was kind of the need for a Threat Intelligence team. There was an opportunity for me to come over to start to build out the capabilities and the path forward with Matt Olney, Ryan Pentney and several others. From there, the Threat Intelligence and Interdiction team grew to what it is today.
AC: What is something about your day to day role at Talos that people might be particularly surprised by or interested in?
JC: One of the challenges when we’re working with a lot of different partners is how we control the information. Some partners tell us, “Hey, we want feedback, but you can’t tell anybody else,” which is really difficult. We take that information and we try to identify our own ways to point to how we identified it so it doesn’t burn that partner. We have to find ways to highlight things in unattributable or alternatively attributable ways. But the good news is that I’ve got an amazing team behind me. They’re force multipliers and they are beasts when it comes to getting the job done.
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