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Earl Carter

Security Research Engineer

Talos Security Intelligence and Research Group

Earl Carter has always had a passion for solving puzzles and understanding how things operate. Mr Carter quickly learned that Identifying security weaknesses is just like solving puzzles. Almost 20 years ago, he was introduced to network security when he accepted a position at the Airforce Information Warfare center in San Antonio, Texas. Since then, Mr Carter, has found been applying his puzzle passion to seeking out new security vulnerabilities in Cisco devices for over 15 years.

Previous roles

Before joining the Cisco Talos - Outreach team, Mr Carter was a Lead Engineer on the Security Technology Assessment Team (STAT). Mr Carter was one of the founding members of this group which has moved through various internal organizations since its establishment in 1999. Most recently it is located under Cisco Security Research and Operations (SRO). Having held this position for 15 years, he was privileged to identify security threats in a wide variety of Cisco Technologies, Products and Services. Besides identifying new threats, Mr. Carter also assisted product teams in hardening their devise and software to mitigate the identified security threats.

More about Earl Carter …

Among Mr. Carter’s significant contributions to Cisco is two patent awards “Binary state machine system and method for "REGEX processing of a data stream in an intrusion detection system” and “Query Data Packet Processing And Network Scanning Method And Apparatus”. In addition to performing security assessments on Cisco devices, he also developed a couple of internal security courses to improve the security expertise throughout Cisco. He developed a course on security and attacked encrypted communications and co-developed an IPv6 security course. In his spare time, Mr. Carter has authored or co-authored the following six Cisco Press Books related Network Security.

"Cisco Secure Intrusion Detection System", 2002, by Earl Carter

"Cisco Secure Intrusion Detection System", 2nd Edition, 2004, Earl Carter

"CCSP Cisco Secure PIX Firewall Advanced Exam Certification Guide (CCSP Self-Study), 2nd Edition, 2004, Earl Carter, Greg Bastien & Christian Abera Degu

"CCSP SNPA Official Exam Certification Guide", 3rd Edition, 2006, Earl Carter, Michael Gibbs, Greg Bastien & Christian Abera Degu

"CCSP IPS Exam Certification Guide", 2006, by Earl Carter

"Intrusion Prevention Fundamentals", 2006, By Earl Carter & Jonathan Hogue

When not analyzing security vulnerabilities, Mr Carter likes to stay active. He currently holds a 2nd degree Black Belt in Jhoon Rhee Taekwondo and a 3rd Degree Black belt in the American Taekwondo Association (ATA) and plans to pursue a ground based martial arts in the near future. Mr. Carter is also very active at church where he has been a youth minister for high school students for over 14 years.

Mr. Carter holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from The University of Texas at San Antonio. Presently, he lives in Austin, Texas, USA, with his wife and two kids.