// Who We Are

BUILT BY
PRACTITIONERS.
NOT CONSULTANTS.

Every CIPHER analyst has operated in environments where wrong answers have consequences. Intelligence operations, incident response for breaches measured in days — not weeks. The security industry has enough advisors. We are investigators.

2013
Founded
Twelve years of adversary research.
340+
Engagements
Across 28 countries and 14 industry sectors.
47
Researchers
Former intelligence, military, and red team professionals.

We think most security
advice is wrong.

Not maliciously. Not incompetently. Wrong because it is built from frameworks designed to pass audits, not to defeat adversaries. Compliance is not security. A checked box is not a closed gap.

We were built around a different question: what would actually stop someone who knows what they are doing? That question has no checklist answer. It requires knowing how attackers think, what they look for, and where they expect to find it.

We know because many of us have been on the other side of that question — in engagements where we were the attacker, finding the gap before someone worse did.

// Leadership

THE TEAM.

Mara Vance
Director, Threat Intelligence

Former NSA cyber operations. Led threat tracking programs across three continents before founding the threat intelligence practice at CIPHER.

Daniel Osei
Head of Red Team

Twelve years red teaming financial institutions and critical infrastructure. Holds world records in several CTF categories that we cannot name.

Yuki Tanaka
Principal Researcher

Specialist in firmware and supply chain attacks. Responsible for three coordinated disclosures in the past two years, affecting three major networking vendors.

Sophia Keller
Director, Incident Response

Managed response to twelve of the last thirty major publicly disclosed breaches. Knows what actually works at 3am when everything is on fire.

Rajan Mehta
Chief of Research

Published 40+ intelligence reports cited by government agencies and enterprise security teams globally. Tracks twenty-seven active threat actor clusters.

Lena Brauer
Head of Advisory

Former CISO for two Fortune 100 companies. Specializes in translating technical threat intelligence into board-level decisions.

// Engage

READY TO CLOSE
THE GAP?

Every day without visibility is a day your adversaries have. Speak with a CIPHER analyst to understand your actual exposure.

No sales pitchFirst call is freeNDA on requestResponse within 24h