Yanek Korff has served in information technology or security roles for over 20 years. Starting out as a student help desk tech in a musty library basement in college he is now co-founder and Chief of Staff at Expel, a DC-area cybersecurity company that makes security easy to understand, use, and continuously improve.

Yanek began his professional career as a systems administrator at Bell Atlantic and then Cigital. He moved on to Aol where he transitioned into a management role and eventually became responsible for much of Aol’s security infrastructure. In 2010, he joined Mandiant to build a new managed services business line to help customers mitigate the impact of security breaches conducted by state-sponsored attackers.

Yanek graduated with a Computer Science degree from William and Mary, a Masters in the Management of Information Technology from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia and was the principal author for Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security, published by O’Reilly.

Yanek lives with his family in Vienna, Virginia with three dogs and as many fish and corals as he can fit into a 300 gallon saltwater aquarium. When he’s not fully engaged with Expel business, he’s likely on vacation or playing video games. Because he’s apparently still ten years old on the inside.