Securonix appoints Joshua Neil as Chief Data Scientist
Securonix announced the appointment of Joshua Neil as Chief Data Scientist. In this position, Neil will be an integral member of Securonix Threat Labs and will drive data science and machine learning research and development to fuel the advanced analytics within the Securonix cloud-native SIEM platform.
A PhD statistician with over 20 years of data science experience, Neil most recently served as Principal Data Science Manager at Microsoft, where he helped design detection technology as part of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft 365 Defender products. He also produced solutions for the Microsoft Threat Experts Hunting team.
Prior to Microsoft, Neil worked at Ernst & Young, where he built their security data science capabilities, delivering anomaly detection to Fortune 500 clients globally. Preceding Ernst & Young, Neil spent 15 years working as a principal investigator at Los Alamos National Laboratory, building a reputation as a high-quality researcher with over 1,000 citations, 8 patents, and an R&D 100 award for his development of PathScan, a network anomaly detection tool that was licensed and commercialized by a EY.
“Josh’s deep expertise in data science and robust research track record align perfectly with our core vision at Securonix: using machine learning and behavior analytics to power detection and response capabilities to combat advanced cyber and insider threats,” said Nanda Santhana, SVP, Cybersecurity Solutions and Threat Labs, Securonix. “His experience in creating data-driven solutions incorporating telemetry from endpoint products will be a massive competitive advantage for us as we continue to improve our XDR capabilities and bolster the underlying analytics engine that powers our cloud-native platform.”
As Chief Data Scientist, Neil will lead the Securonix data science team and will be primarily responsible for driving the machine learning initiatives needed to power content-as-a-service and ultimately bolster the defenses of Securonix customers.
The Securonix Threat Labs team conducts primary research into emerging threats and trends to develop mitigation strategies for customers and share threat intelligence with the community. Neil and his team will work closely with threat hunters, detection engineers and researchers to ensure that the data science and machine learning initiatives replicate security operations analyst functions.
“It’s my firm belief that the industry can elevate its approach to detection and response, uplifting security operations, incident response, threat hunting and forensics professionals through the careful application of machine learning and advanced statistical modeling,” said Neil. “Securonix is the only next-generation SIEM I considered joining, due to the combination of its state-of-the-art, open and scalable infrastructure with the sophisticated behavioral modeling core to the technology. This is truly unique in the industry, and I could not be more excited to be a part of this innovative and visionary company.”