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Russ Smoak

Director

Security Intelligence Operations

Russ Smoak is Vice President of Information Technology for the Security and Trust Organization at Cisco. Russ is responsible for multiple security programs focused on product vulnerability disclosure, secure development, advanced security research and serviceability design engineering.

Russ and his team collaborate globally across all business functions within Cisco to ensure consistent delivery of Field Notices, Security Advisories and other actionable security-focused content.

Russ built a unique portfolio of experience and has 30 years of service within Cisco through successful positions in Engineering, Customer Experience (CX), Security & Trust, and Sales.

Articles

April 23, 2015

SECURITY

Best Practices: Device Hardening and Recommendations

2 min read

On April 13th, 2015, Cisco PSIRT was made aware of multiple instances of customer disruption in a specific region caused by a denial of service attack against Cisco devices. We responded quickly to support speedy restoration for our customers. Our ongoing investigation has shown that the storage of some Cisco devices was erased, removing both […]

January 21, 2014

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SECURITY

Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report: Threat Intelligence Offers View into Network Compromises

2 min read

Thanks to extensive detection telemetry and analytics, we have a clear view into the attackers and malicious actors that are infiltrating Internet infrastructure and using trusted applications as a foothold for gaining access to networks. As explained in the Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report, online criminals continue to develop more sophisticated methods for breaching security […]

February 14, 2013

SECURITY

Reflections from a road trip: The evolving risk of DDoS attacks

The author, Russ Smoak (Director of Cisco Security Intelligence Operations), discusses some of the feedback received from customers recently with regard to the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) activities that have occurred over the last few months. One of the main themes from this post is that it is time to start considering the threat of DDoS as a business continuity risk and not necessarily just a security concern.