David Kennedy (ReL1K) is a security ninja that likes to write code, break things, and develop exploits when he has spare time. Heavily involved with BackTrack and the Social-Engineer Framework, David continues (and strives) to contribute to a variety of open-source projects. David had the privilege in speaking at some of the nations largest conferences on a number of occasions including BlackHat, Defcon and Shmoocon. David is the creator of the Social-Engineer Toolkit (SET), Fast-Track, modules/attacks for Metasploit, and has (responsibly) released a number of public exploits, including attacks that affect some of the largest software vendors in the world. David heavily co-authored the Metasploit Unleashed course available online and has a number of security related white-papers in the field of exploitation.

David was awarded the Crain’s “20 in their 20s” award for being one of twenty most successful people in Northeast Ohio and has been the subject matter expert in a number of local news interviews and live TV appearances. David is on the board of directors for the Northeast Ohio Information Security Forums (www.neoisf.org), a group dedicated on spreading the wealth of knowledge in information security to Northeast Ohio. NEOISF generally has around anywhere from forty to seventy people that frequent it a month.

Currently David is a Director of Information Security for an international multi-billion dollar Fortune 1000 organization and is in charge of ensuring that security is maintained in over 60 different countries. He has a team of highly skilled security professionals that ensure the organizations systems are protected against attack. His main focus has been on zero-day and security research, application security, vulnerability management, penetration testing, incident response, data loss prevention, monitoring and detection, and user awareness programs.

Prior to his current responsibilities at his current employer, David was a Partner and Vice President of a large information security consulting firm where he led a team of highly skilled and trained security professionals and performed thousands of penetration tests and security assessments across the world for a number of large Fortune 100, 500, and 1000 organizations. Lastly, David served as a United States Marine working directly for the intelligence community and deployed twice to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom where he was the youngest Marine to receive multiple awards for recognition for going above and beyond in his battalion. David also developed a number of highly technical and cutting edge systems for the Marine Corps that were utilized on missions across the world. Towards the end of his military career, David was an instructor for the intelligence community on security related programs.