Josiah Dykstra

Josiah Dykstra is a seasoned cybersecurity practitioner, researcher, author, and speaker. He is the owner of Designer Security, LLC and a researcher at RTX BBN Technologies. Josiah previously worked at Trail of Bits and for 19 years in the U.S. Department of Defense. Dr. Dykstra holds a Ph.D. in computer science and is interested in cybersecurity science, especially where humans intersect with technology. He has studied stress in hacking, action bias in incident response, and the economics of cyber threat intelligence.

Dr. Dykstra is a frequent author and speaker, including Black Hat and RSA Conference. He received the CyberCorps® Scholarship for Service (SFS) fellowship and is one of six people in the SFS Hall of Fame. In 2017, he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from then President Barack Obama. Dr. Dykstra is a Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He is the author of numerous research papers, the book Essential Cybersecurity Science (O'Reilly Media, 2016), co-author of Cybersecurity Myths and Misconceptions (Pearson, 2023), and Switching to Cyber (CISO DRG, 2025).