Heather Adkins in

Heather Adkins

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Review Board at BlackHat
📍 Mountain View, California, United States

Heather Adkins is a veteran security executive and a founding member of Googles security team, where she serves as VP of Security Engineering. With over two decades of experience, she also holds key advisory roles, including Deputy Chair of the CISA Cyber Safety Review Board, to improve national cybersecurity.

Outside of her extensive work in technology, Heather is passionate about studying medieval history. She draws parallels between piecing together sparse historical records and investigating complex system compromises, using her wide-ranging reading habits on topics like quantum physics to find unique solutions to security challenges.

Her career in cybersecurity was sparked by curiosity, not fear, when the internet service provider she worked for in college was hacked.

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Experience
26 Years
Current Role
Review Board
Job Level
Senior
Location
Mountain View, California, United States
Personality Overview

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Communication Style
Decision Approach
Work Preference

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Priorities

Topics Heather cares about

AI-Driven Threats
Discusses the future of AI in security, including threats from "Agentic AI hackers" and the necessity of using AI-based tools for defense.
Cyber Incident Analysis
As Deputy Chair of the CISA Cyber Safety Review Board, she is deeply involved in post-mortems of major incidents like the Log4j vulnerability to provide national recommendations.
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Career

Work history

4-2023
Review Board
BlackHat
2-2023
Steering Committee Member, Ransomware Taskforce
Institute for Security and Technology (IST)
3-2022 - 1-2025
Deputy Chair
Cyber Safety Review Board, CISA
2-2021
Strategic Advisor
Silverado Policy Accelerator
4-2020 - 4-2020
Co Author
Building Secure and Reliable Systems
In the press

Media appearances

Inside the Cyber Safety Review Board – Fireside Chat (Black Hat). Featured in Black Hat (official webcast)
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Education
2006 - 2009
Extracurricular
San José State University
1994 - 1999
Biology
Humboldt State University
Social presence
in
Behavioral profile

DISC profile (public)

DISC behavioral profile

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