John Young :
Have you ever seen the movie “Catch Me If You Can” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks? Like many cybersecurity experts, John Young started out on the wrong side of the law, and after hearing him speak audiences say his life is very much like the movie. As a 15-year-old in New York City he hacked the AT&T phone system for three years before being “scared straight” in 1978 after two FBI agents paid a visit to his grandmother's house.
Properly motivated to use his computer skills for good, Young began a 40-year cybersecurity career and eventually retired from IBM to found his own consulting company.
John Young is regarded as one of America's top corporate cybersecurity experts. He's also a television personality who's appeared on CBS News, Fox, and many others. He's done cybersecurity presentations with a myriad of government agencies, including the Secret Service, Department of Justice, and Treasury Department, and recently demonstrated how to use AI to bypass the security system of one of the “Big Four” banks in the United States…in under 5 minutes.
Mr. Young sits on a variety of boards, from publicly listed technology companies to one of the largest universities in the United States. He's written or appeared as a cybersecurity expert in dozens of articles, been a guest on countless podcasts, and his book “Don't Hack: How to Kick Hackers to the Curb” is available on Amazon. In his free time, as an AARP volunteer, he instructs older citizens on how to avoid being victimized by cyber scammers.
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