Our Team

Nathan Sportsman

Nathan has extensive experience in information security and is a respected resource within the security community. Over the years, he has worked across most industry sectors and clients have ranged from Wall St and Silicon Valley to government intelligence agencies and renowned educational institutions. Consulting experience includes notable clients such as Toyota, Dell, Home Depot, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, MGM, Delta Dental, Motorola, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Merrill Lynch, Fidelity, NASDAQ, MetLife, Blue Cross Blue Shield, NSA, State of Texas, and MIT Lincoln Labs.

Nathan is a contributing author to the 6th Edition of the best selling book Hacking Exposed, a contributing developer for OWASP's JbroFuzz project, and a NIST individual contributor for emerging standards. He is a frequent public speaker and has lectured on the latest hacking techniques for the National Security Agency, served as an instructor for the Ultimate Hacking Series at Black Hat, and is a regular speaker for various security organizations such as ISSA, Infragard, and OWASP.

Nathan began his career at Sun Microsystems as a Solaris developer where he performed development work in user and kernel space for Solaris 9 & 10. During his time at Sun he earned a patent, Issue No. 7444268, for his work in fault management and was also a contributor to the Solaris Security Toolkit (SST), a free tool for hardening and auditing Solaris Operating Systems. Upon leaving Sun, Nathan transitioned to a consulting role and joined Symantec as a Principal Security Consultant. While at Symantec, he acted as a resident technical advisor for high visibility clients and worked closely with various Symantec product teams in evaluating and fixing vulnerabilities within their software. He left Symantec to join Foundstone's professional consulting services. During his time at Foundstone he operated within the penetration testing, software security, and training service lines.

Industry designations include the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional (CSSLP), Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), and GIAC Certified Incident Handler (GCIH). Nathan holds a BS in Electrical & Computer Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.

Ryan W. Smith

At Praetorian, Ryan's current focus is on the development of technology and systems in support of computer network defense, attack, and exploitation. Prior to joining Praetorian, Ryan Smith was an Associate Staff member of the Information Systems Technology Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. His previous work at Lincoln Labs was in the code analysis group, in which he focused on the development of a prototype tool to automate the malware analysis process using information flow and virtual machine introspection. Prior to Lincoln Laboratory, Mr. Smith worked at 21st Century Technologies and Applied Research Labs in Austin, TX, and PricewaterhouseCoopers in Dallas, TX. Previous work has included graph-based network attack correlation, steganography, netflow traffic analysis, vulnerability and risk analysis, and identity management.

Ryan was an active member of the Honeynet Project from 2002 - 2008, in which he participated in the testing and development of various honeynet technologies, and was invited to give several talks on the usefulness of honeynets for strengthening network security as well as research. While at the University of Texas, Ryan was the head of the local information security group on campus, and the organizer of the local cyber "capture the flag" exercise. As a result of this position, he was invited to a NFS funded workshop to determine the efficacy of a National Collegiate Cyber Defense Exercise, and subsequently assisted in the organization of the inaugural Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, which now hosts over 50 Universities in 8 regional qualifiers and a finalist round in San Antonio. While at the University of Texas, Ryan also led a team of graduate students to design and implement a prototype of an automated polymorphic shellcode analyzer to extract the system calls and parameters of arbitrarily obfuscated Windows shellcode.

Industry designations include the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). Ryan received a B.S in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas in Austin, where he focused on information assurance and network communications. Ryan received a M.S. in Security informatics from Johns Hopkins, where he focused on network and systems security as well as privacy and technical public policy.

Adam Pridgen

Adam Pridgen brings over eight years of consulting and research experience to the Praetorian team. He has worked with clients across most major verticals, including: the government, academia, finance, insurance, technology, and retail sectors. As an active speaker, Adam has presented on topics ranging from reverse engineering and application security to wireless hacking techniques at the National Security Agency. He has also lectured at Rice University, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Texas.

Currently, Adam manages internal research and development initiatives for Praetorian. Prior to joining the company, Adam was a member of Foundstone's Professional Services (a division of McAfee) where he provided assessment and advisory services, including: code reviews, threat modeling, cryptographic analysis, and software penetration testing. Adam's work experience also includes research roles at 21st Century Technologies, the Department of Defense, and The University of Texas at Austin.

Industry designations include the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH). Adam holds a BS and MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. Adam is currently pursuing his PhD in Computer Science as an NPSC Fellow under the supervision of Dr. Dan Wallach at Rice University.

Paul West Jauregui

Paul oversees the planning, development, and execution of Praetorian's marketing and advertising activities. He is responsible for leading Praetorian's overall marketing efforts, including brand management, advertising, market research, corporate communications and public relations. In his role, he drives initiatives that support the company's accelerated growth grounded in providing services, research, and products that make the world a better, safer, and more secure place.

Before joining Praetorian, Paul served as creative director for Myover Inc., where he was responsible for overseeing multi-disciplinary teams in the development and production of creative marketing solutions that generated results for clients. His creative work, in online marketing and advertising, has been showcased in BusinessWeek and has earned him numerous state and national awards.

Paul earned his Masters of Business Administration with a concentration in marketing at St. Edward's University and his Bachelors of Science in communications at the University of Texas, Austin. He is an active member of the American Marketing Association (AMA) and the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA).

Matt Starolis

At Praetorian, Matt is primarily responsible for Praetorian's market expansion and growth. Prior to joining Praetorian, Matt Starolis spent five years at National Instruments as a District Sales Manager covering Northern California's Silicon Valley area. His account focus ranged from Fortune 500 companies to budding and hopeful start-ups, with a significant portion of his business coming from the Military and Aerospace segment. Key accounts included Lockheed Martin, NASA-Ames Research Center, Space Systems/Loral and BAE.

Over the years, Matt has been continuously recognized for his sales excellence and was honored as the keynote speaker for NI's Global Sales Conference, nominated as a finalist for the Rookie Salesperson of the Year, and recognized by his peers with the Team Spirit award.

Matt is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin where he obtained his BS in Electrical Engineering and worked under the tutelage of distinguished professor and computer architect, Dr. Yale Patt.