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Justin Elze

CTO, Director of Research

EXPERIENCE
Justin Elze is currently serving as Chief Technology Officer at TrustedSec. Over his 8 years with the company as an InfoSec expert, Justin has used his vast expertise in enterprise penetration testing, network security, social engineering, and red teaming to identify clients’ vulnerabilities and ultimately, protect their technology infrastructure. Prior to becoming CTO, Justin held the roles of Director of Innovation, Research, and Advanced Testing and Principal Security Consultant for TrustedSec.

With more than a decade of experience in the IT industry, Justin’s expertise is increasingly sought out by others in the field. He has taught at Black Hat and spoken at DerbyCon, where he also served on the CFP Review Board, and is also featured as an industry leader in the published books Tribe of Hackers: Cybersecurity Advice from the Best Hackers in the World and Tribe of Hackers Red Team: Tribal Knowledge from the Best in Offensive Cybersecurity.

Prior to joining TrustedSec, Justin was a Senior Penetration Tester for Accuvant LABS, Optiv, Dell SecureWorks, and Redspin, where he led numerous red team engagements and penetration tests. He has worked across a variety of industries, including roles for ISPs, hosting companies, Department of Defense contracting companies, and consulting companies. Today, he leans on what he learned throughout his roles in various capacities to inform his choices as CTO and further his thought leadership in the industry.

Outside of his work experience and “ethical hacker” persona, Justin is passionate about building, tuning, and racing cars (and, yes, occasionally hacking them) and spending time with his 3 dogs. You can find his latest musings—security-related and otherwise—on his Twitter account, @HackingLZ.

Featured Blogs And Resources

Discover the blogs, analysis, webinars, and podcasts by this team member.

Blog May 18 2023

Walking the Tightrope: Maximizing Information Gathering while Avoiding Detection for Red Teams

Analyze the balance between gaining useful information and avoiding detection, detailing recon techniques that can be employed without compromising stealth.…

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Blog March 17 2023

Critical Outlook Vulnerability: In-Depth Technical Analysis and Recommendations (CVE-2023-23397)

Threat Overview Earlier this week, Microsoft released a patch for Outlook vulnerability CVE-2023-23397, which has been actively exploited for almost an entire…

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Webinars March 15 2023

Ask Me Anything: Penetration Testing Innovations and Insights

Join David Kennedy, Founder & Chief Hacking Officer, and Justin Elze, CTO & Director of Research, for a live webinar in which they’ll answer your questions…

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Webinars December 14 2021

Log4j: Live Update Webcast

During the webcast, we will be joined by David Kennedy, TrustedSec CEO & Binary Defense CTO, Randy Pargman, Binary Defense Vice President of Threat Hunting &…

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Blog April 18 2024

PCI DSS Vulnerability Management: The Most Misunderstood Requirement – Part 3

Related RequirementsThis is part three (3) of a three (3) part series on PCI DSS version 4.0 requirement 6.3.1, for identification and management of…

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Blog April 16 2024

PCI DSS Vulnerability Management: The Most Misunderstood Requirement – Part 2

Risk RankingThis is part two (2) of a three (3) part series on PCI DSS version 4.0 requirement 6.3.1, for identification and management of vulnerabilities.…

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Blog April 11 2024

PCI DSS Vulnerability Management: The Most Misunderstood Requirement – Part 1

Vulnerability IdentificationPCI DSS version 4.0 requirement 6.3.1, for identification and management of vulnerabilities, and its predecessors in previous…

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Blog April 09 2024

A Hitch-Hacker's Guide To DACL-Based Detections - The Addendum

 This blog was co-authored by TAC Practice Lead Megan Nilsen and Andrew Schwartz.1    IntroductionLast year, Andrew and I posted a four (4) part blog series…

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Blog April 04 2024

Observations From Business Email Compromise (BEC) Attacks

Since joining TrustedSec, I have gotten to work numerous cases, and each of them is like unraveling a mystery to get at the truth—especially the situations…

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Blog March 26 2024

From Chaos to Clarity: Organizing Data With Structured Formats

1.1      IntroductionAbout a year ago, we introduced a logging utility into our internal tooling on the Targeted Operations team to standardize how we output…

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