FortiGuard appoints former cyber warfare officer

Former RAAF cyber warfare officer Mark Robson has been appointed as senior tactical threat analyst in FortiGuard's managed detection and response team, FortiResponder.

FortiGuard is the global threat research and response arm of Fortinet, and Robson has been appointed as senior tactical threat analyst in the FortiResponder team, based in Canberra.

This is a newly created role covering Australia and New Zealand, to ensure follow-the-sun 24/7 threat response coverage for clients in Oceania.

In his new appointment, Robson will be working closely with colleagues in the Middle East and the United States with the aim to detect and respond to threats in real-time for their global customers. This will give Australian and New Zealand customers the confidence of a locally managed response that continues to benefit from global resources.

Robson spent a decade in the Royal Australian Air Force before joining FortiGuard, where he studied electrical engineering and eventually specialised in cybersecurity.

In his role as a cyber warfare officer, he led vulnerability assessments in both the deployed and domestic environments and worked as part of the RAAF incident response team investigating intrusions into RAAF standalone systems.

He was team officer-in-charge of the RAAF threat hunting capability, working alongside Five Eyes partners, particularly in the United States, working to develop and share threat hunting tactics, techniques and procedures to support defensive cyber operations.

"The FortiGuard team is technically exceptional, so I'm looking forward to working as part of the team," Robson says.

"I'll be looking to bring my experience, skills and training in kill chain analysis, hypothesis development, and tactics, techniques and procedures driven hunt to the team. Applying these military concepts to enterprise security will help FortiGuard's customers get ahead of and respond faster and more effectively to threats."

According to Robson, he is passionate about understanding emerging threats and the nuances of adversary tradecraft and is proficient in live forensic analysis of Windows endpoints and he has a high level of proficiency and experience working with PowerShell, Splunk and the SysInternals Suite.

"The addition of Mark Robson to the FortiGuard team is a significant coup for the organisation," says FortiGuard Labs ANZ director of threat intelligence Glenn Maiden.

"We were looking for someone to fill this newly created role and the bar was extremely high. Finding the right person with high-end capabilities to execute this role properly was challenging," he says.

"To secure the talents of someone of his calibre and experience is a giant win for our team and for our customers. We're looking forward to showing our customers significant benefits from this expanded capability.