Joel Esler earned his stripes in intrusion analysis and
incident response working for the U.S. Department of the Army. After earning a reputation
for his work with Sourcefire’s Snort open source IDS, Sourcefire hired him in
2005 as a Senior Professional Services Consultant.
Esler quickly rose through the ranks at Sourcefire to become
Senior Research Engineer for the Vulnerability Research Team (VRT) and Open Source
Community Manager. In that dual role, he was responsible for threat detection
created for the company’s Snort and ClamAV projects, as well as management of
those open source projects.
In 2013, Esler joined Cisco following the company’s
acquisition of Sourcefire. Today, as the Manager for Open
Source, Web Development, Design, and Education for the Cisco Talos Group,
Esler’s duties include brand management for Open Source and Talos, the Web Development Group, and Talos Education. He is also responsible for the Open
Source projects that originated at Sourcefire and are now part of the Cisco
security solutions portfolio, such as Snort, ClamAV, Razorback, and
Daemonlogger.
As part of the leadership for Talos, Esler plays a central
role in coordinating the work of and cooperation between team members, who contribute
diverse areas of expertise to enhance Cisco security products and help protect customer
networks. He attributes his ongoing commitment to a career in security to his
passion for solving puzzles and the fact that he loves facing new challenges
every day.
Esler is a regular contributor to the Cisco Security and
Open Source Blogs: http://blogs.cisco.com/author/joelesler/, as well as the author and maintainer of the Snort and ClamAV blogs.
Previous roles
Prior to joining Sourcefire in 2005 as a Senior Professional
Services Consultant, Esler was a contractor for Lockheed Martin. In that role,
he worked for Lockheed Martin Information Technologies as a Senior Information
Assurance Analyst and Computer Defense and Information Assurance Section
Manager at the Regional Computer Emergency Response Team – South.
As a veteran of the U.S. Army, Esler served as a Multichannel
Transmissions Supervisor for the U.S. Department of the Army.
More about Joel Esler
…
For the past decade, Esler has been an advisor for the SANS
certification process, specifically helping students to earn the Global
Information Assurance Certification (GIAC) Gold Practical credential. He is
responsible for grading students’ GIAC Gold Papers, which is the core
requirement for Gold certification.
Additionally, Esler is a retired Senior Handler for the SANS
Internet Storm Center, a global cooperative cyber threat/Internet security
monitor and alert system.
Esler is also a co-author of the book, Snort® IDS and IPS Toolkit,
published in 2007.
When he’s not tinkering with computers and technology, Esler
enjoys working on his 1968 Ford Mustang and spending time with his wife
and three children.
From June 2012 to June 2014, Esler served as Mayor and Councilman for the town of Townsend, DE.
