About

Hi, I’m Ken! I’ve been writing sporadically on technology and security for several years, mostly on PKC’s blog, but as of February 2020, I’ll be posting my work here, including re-posting some updated essays.

You very well may disagree with the ideas you read here! The BHAG of this site is to be a source of fresh thinking on tried-and-true topics in technology.

Necessarily, this will involve exploring some controversial, new ways of thinking. In some ways that’s the point—the technology industry is in dire need of fresh thinking to handle the overwhelming growth in complexity of the systems we are supposed to build, manage, and protect.

In taking this approach, I’m inspired by Peter Thiel’s famous interview question:

What important truth do very few people agree with you on?

Peter Thiel

Here’s a little story about what that looks like, and what I’m shooting for. I was at Dino Dai Zovi’s keynote for BlackHat 2019, where he was arguing that in the future, all security people will be software people. Telling a room full of security lifers that their skills will shortly be of no value takes guts. Several times, I started clapping, and realized I was the only one.

And that’s exactly what Peter Thiel is talking about: to clap when no one else is clapping.

Of course, not everything I write will meet that standard, but that’s the challenge.

I’m currently the VP of Engineering at FiscalNote. In past lives, I’ve managed engineering teams, been a virtual/fractional CISO, head of security, a cyber threat analyst for the government, and an AppSec white box tester.

I was Founding Partner at PKC, a software development and cybersecurity agency, where I led PKC’s security practice for 6 years and helped develop Balboa, an end-to-end encrypted file and messaging app: https://balboa.io. 

I’m also a proud alumnus from Princeton class of 2011. Go Tigers!! 🐅