README

christian

Hello world! ☕

My name is Christian

Personal Life

I am guided by my personal relationship with Jesus Christ, striving to follow His teachings in all that I do.

Supported by my best friend and wonderful wife, we are navigating the joys of raising our two beautiful daughters. I owe every achievement to her constant support and encouragement.

My curiosity, my responsibility to provide for my family, and a cautious optimism for the future are what drive me.

Contact Me

✉️

Email:

public(AT)christiant.io

Secure Communication

🔐

Email me your Signal username or number

For secure and private end-to-end encrypted communication


TL;DR ☕

🔒 Cybersecurity professional
🏢 Manager Cyber Security Consulting at Grand Canyon Education
🌐 Owner & Principal Consultant at Dark Roast Cyber
🌐 Director of Threat Intelligence at Arizona Cyber Threat Response Alliance (ACTRA)
🛠️ Experienced in SOC Leadership, SIEM, EDR, NTA, Firewalls and WAFs, Cloud [ AWS Azure GCP ], and vulnerability management
🐧 Linux enthusiast and advocate
🐍 Python enthusiast and open-source contributor
🎓 Educator and presenter on various cybersecurity topics
🤝 Passionate about community involvement and knowledge sharing


Professional Life

Professionally, I serve as Manager of Cyber Security Consulting at Grand Canyon Education, where I lead the security services and consulting team. My focus is on helping organizations build security programs and improve security operations, tackling difficult problems to solve. My decade at GCE has included various technical and leadership roles in security architecture, threat detection, and incident response.

I am also the Owner and Principal Consultant at Dark Roast Cyber, where I perform open-source development and provide independent consulting services.

I am an advocate for Threat Intelligence sharing, including Sigma, YARA, and Snort/Suricata rules within our security community. I’m also a big advocate of Linux as a primary workstation and open-source solutions.


Contributions and Advocacy

Beyond my professional responsibilities, I am deeply involved in the Threat Intelligence community. As a leader at the Arizona Cyber Threat Response Alliance (ACTRA), I contribute to our collective cybersecurity efforts. I frequently share my knowledge through presentations, such as “Becoming the Predator and Not the Prey” and “Can Ducks Teach us to Share”.

My passion for research and content development has led to the creation of valuable resources like the Log4Shell Hunt and Sunburst Hunt GitHub repositories. These projects aim to assist the cybersecurity community in addressing critical vulnerabilities.

In collaboration with Grand Canyon University and ACTRA, I proudly support TISU, a growing student Threat Intelligence Academy and Apprenticeship Program. This initiative fosters the next generation of cybersecurity professionals, bridging the gap between academia and industry.

Open Source and Community Involvement

I’m a strong believer in the efficacy and efficiency of open-source software. I make minor contributions to the OpenWebUI community and maintain an active GitHub profile with most of my repositories being public (MIT/Apache Licensed).

My Happy Place…

ct-round


Current Roles

In Cybersecurity, we don’t have the luxury of time. Our work demands persistence, proactivity, and collaboration. I believe that you don’t need to work at the same company to be on the same team.

Manager Cyber Security Consulting@GCE

Lead the security services and consulting team at GCE, helping organizations build security programs and improve security operations. My decade at GCE has included various technical and leadership roles in security architecture, threat detection, and incident response. I've developed security programs, implemented detection systems, and built resilient infrastructure. See my LinkedIn profile for details on my roles and responsibilities.

Owner & Principal Consultant@Dark Roast Cyber

Owner and Principal Consultant performing open-source development and independent consulting services. Focused on building security tools and providing expert guidance to organizations seeking to strengthen their security posture.

Director of Threat Intelligence@ACTRA

Leads ACTRA's threat intelligence operations, analyzing emerging cyber threats and providing strategic insights to protect critical infrastructure and member organizations. Oversees the collection, analysis, and dissemination of actionable intelligence to stakeholders while developing frameworks and fostering information-sharing partnerships across public and private sectors.

Board Member@Phoenix ISSA

Board member for Phoenix ISSA, which was recognized as ISSA Medium Chapter of the Year 2025. I present on security topics, organize educational events, and help shape our chapter's direction to foster professional development and community engagement.

Threat Hunter@Cyber Resilience Institute

As a cyber intelligence threat hunter, I focus on proactively identifying advanced persistent threats and attack patterns before they cause significant damage. I combine technical expertise with intelligence analysis to enhance defense capabilities across sectors.

Digital Sherlock@Atlantic Council's DFRLab

Part of a global community working to combat disinformation and online harm. Through this program, I've developed skills in OSINT techniques, geolocation, social media analysis, and digital forensics. This training enables me to contribute to making the internet safer by investigating foreign influence operations and elevating standards for open source research.


⚒ Favorite Tools

Cloudflare Ollama Hugging Face Obsidian TensorFlow Visual Studio Vim Splunk Enterprise Kali ELK Podman Slack IBM Threat Exchange VirusTotal

💻 Favorite OS Flavors

Debian Fedora Android Arch

☁ Cloud Experience

Cloudflare Workers DigitalOcean GitHub Actions GitHub Pages AWS

Previous Presentations

Conference Presentations:
  • INTERFACE Phoenix 2026 - The New CyberSec Workforce: Leading Through Change, Strengthening Collective Defense
  • ElevateIT 2026 - Keynote Panel Moderator: Leading Through the Unknown: CyberSecurity Strategy in a Quantum-Ready World
  • Critical Infrastructure Executive Briefing (May 12, 2026) - Panel Member: Changes in the Professional Cybersecurity Workspace and Collective Defense
  • CyberShare Summit 2025 - Closing conference keynote.
  • 10th Annual Cyber Southwest Symposium (2025) - Keynote address
  • Agentic SOC: Next-Generation Security Operations (2025) - Implementing AI agents for automated security response and orchestration
  • Advanced Cybersecurity Defense Strategies (2025) - Keynote address on multi-layered defense frameworks
  • DIY AI: Build Your Own Digital InfoSec Team with BYOLLM (2024-2025) - Building AI-powered security teams using open-source LLMs for threat detection and analysis
  • ISSA GenAI Limitations and Uses (Q4 2024) - Practical applications and limitations of Generative AI in cybersecurity operations
  • Building a Private GenAI Team with Open-Source Models (2024) - Strategies for local LLM deployment and team integration
  • Threat Hunting: Becoming the Predator and No Longer the Prey (2023-2024) - Developing repeatable, scalable threat hunting processes with measurable ROI
  • Can Ducks Teach us to Share: What hunting Qakbot and other threats teach us about CTI (2023) - Improving cyber threat intelligence sharing based on adversary tactics and botnet hunting
Podcasts & Media:
  • TechTables Podcast (May 11, 2026)
  • TechTables Podcast (2023)

View more speaking events and topics: Christian Taillon on Sessionize

DIY-AI-Team BYOLLM Threat-Predator Qakbot-Hunting GenAIInCyber OpenWeightModels AgentAITeam InferenceGovernance LocalLLMs NetworkForensics EDR ElasticSecurity AWS_Security Hunting CTIHunting ThreatIntel SupplyChain Forensics MallardSpider ModernSoc SIEM SplunkDashboarding Git4Ops RPi-MineCraft MemoryForensics Malware Dev: Scripting/Automation Tools EDREvasion ZeekHunting TimeAnalysis GenAITask RedTeaming ThreatEmulation AISecOps OSINT CloudSecurity