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.
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TL;DR ☕
🔒 Cybersecurity professional
🏢 Security Engineer at Grand Canyon Education
🌐 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 a senior member of the IT Security team as a Threat Response Engineer reporting to the CISO at Grand Canyon Education, where my focus lies on deploying, maintaining, and enhancing our Detection, Prevention, and Response tools. This includes working with SIEM, EDR, and NTA systems to bolster the capabilities of our SOC.
I lead security efforts in several Vulnerability areas: Code Security, Cloud Security, and Host Vulnerability Detection. We maintain an ad-hoc Threat Hunting practice and rely on a growing Threat Intelligence program.
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…
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.
Security Engineer@GCE
Security Engineer reporting directly to the CISO. 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.
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
💻 Favorite OS Flavors
☁ Cloud Experience
Previous Presentations
- CyberShare Summit 2025 - Closing conference keynote.
- 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
View more speaking events and topics: Christian Taillon on Sessionize
