InQuest appoints Darren Spruell as Chief Intelligence Officer

InQuest appointed Darren Spruell, a seasoned information security professional, as its Chief Intelligence Officer.

Darren brings an array of technical skills bolstered by intense curiosity and a passion for continual mastery.

Darren’s career includes specialties in several areas of cybersecurity, including security engineering, incident response, malware analysis, threat research, and cyber threat intelligence. He has experience both contributing to and leading teams in multiple industry sectors, including healthcare, education, financial, defense, and manufacturing, working for small companies, large enterprises, managed service providers, and specialized security vendors.

Darren has been a long-time collaborator in intelligence-sharing communities and has led efforts to maintain data-sharing relationships and anti-abuse coordination in critical industries such as web hosting and internet service providers.

Additionally, Darren has partnered within the public sector as a contributor to working groups and supported law enforcement agency efforts focused on unveiling and dismantling criminal operations. He has also carried out long-term threat research that has resulted in the attribution and tracking of novel threat actor groups and malware.

Darren is the author of numerous reports and has spoken at security conferences on less mainstream topics such as monitoring passive network intrusion sensors, detecting and responding to malicious traffic distribution, the rise of web payment card skimmers, and large-scale mobile and Linux botnet distribution operations.

“Over the years, I’ve been focused on defending organizations against an ever-growing and changing threat landscape. Despite the evolution into new frontiers like SaaS, cloud, and Web3, one constant has always been present; files are the prominent carrier object for threats. Whether it’s web-based exploits, malicious document phishing campaigns, second-stage delivery over the web, or stealthy malware framework stagers at the endpoint, files give us a context for focus and detection,” said Darren Spruell, “I’m excited to join the team at InQuest where this focus on files is sharpened in DFI and through our File Detection and Response capabilities.”