Dani Woolf (She/Her)

User Experience Specialist

Founder & CEO @ Audience 1st | Content @ Nucleus Security | Customer Research Certified

Five years ago, I pissed off a CISO so badly in front of my CMO, he helped me build a $1M+ cybersecurity buyer intelligence business. That humiliating moment during a website messaging feedback session? Best career move I ever made. Here's the uncomfortable truth about B2B tech marketing most won't tell you:

Most marketers create buyer personas in echo chambers instead of interviewing real buyers to get direct buyer insights. They're selling to fictional characters while their actual prospects choose competitors.

I learned this the hard way when a CISO, my customer, publicly destroyed me for using a buzzword out of context. At that time, I'd never actually talked to a single security leader about their real problems.

Instead of defending my approach, I asked him for coffee to learn why I upset him. That conversation led to thousands of conversations with CISOs, security architects, and IT leaders who taught me what B2B marketers get dangerously wrong about technical and business buyers.

What I discovered:
→ IT buyers don't trust marketing because marketers don't understand them and their environments
→ The best "research" comes from actual conversations, not survey data
→ Skeptical IT buyers will tell you exactly what they need - if you ask the right questions
→ Authentic relationships beat aggressive outreach every time

Today I help B2B cybersecurity companies understand their skeptical buyers through:

🎯 CyberSynapse - Direct access to vetted IT decision-makers for buyer intelligence that actually drives revenue

🍳 Cooking with CISOs - A TV show that builds real relationships with technical leaders (yes, over actual food)

📺 YouTube/Content - Sharing what 1000+ technical buyers taught me about effective B2B marketing

Some of the most skeptical and hard-to-reach cybersecurity buyers have dubbed me the marketer they actually trust - and I teach other B2B marketers how to earn that same trust and credibility.

Ready to stop operating in the dark and start growing with confidence?

Visit the links in my Featured section to see how I can help.

Founder and CEO

I'm removing the barrier to customer insights for go-to-market teams in growth-stage cybersecurity companies so they can scale growth and retain loyal customers.

Dani Woolf

Planit Testing

Further grow and establish the security capability across all of Planit.

Practice Director Security Services

Established Security testing services and defined the security testing services portfolio for Planit Testing. Services range from Governance-Risk-Compliance to Infrastructure Security, Application Security, Penetration Testing and the DevSecOps offering that integrates fully automated security services into DevOps CI/CD chains, making security visible through a single dashboard for all Agile team members.
Driven sales and marketing activities in NZ, AU, UK, and IN. Grown and managed the team of 12 security specialists in NZ and AU, focussing on healthy team dynamics and collaboration.
Conducted numerous penetration tests, hardware reverse engineering (ICS/IoT), security and risk assessments, and security services delivery in New Zealand and Australia.
Implemented DevSecOps (integrating security tooling into pipelines) for various medium and large government agencies, using Commercial off the Shell tools and Open Source tools to establish visibility of security posture of the solution throughout the development lifecycle with a focus on data, application, infrastructure, and code.
Presented at various events such as the NZTECH days, PMI conference, ITX, Victoria University, Test Professionals Network, Sydney Airport Security Expo.
Reviewed and provided guidance on internal Information Security policies for ISO27001 efforts.
Partook in the NZQA working group that defined the level 6 Cybersecurity qualification for NZ.

Principal Security Consultant

Snow B.V.

Business Analysis & Architecture, Information Security and Penetration Testing (red teaming), Hardware reverse engineering (IoT/ICS/SCADA).
Delivered professional services at clients regarding Information Security, IT Security, Security Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, and Business Analyses.
For these services, leveraged various methodologies, frameworks, standards, and technologies such as TOGAF9.1, ISO27001, CISSP, OWASP and the CIS 20 Critical Security Controls.

Information Technology Security Consultant

URENCO Nederland

Together with the test teams and project management teams I managed the local business through large migration and refresh projects within the ICT domain and guard the data integrity, interface flows and inventory. 
This included building and populating the CMDB/CMS, focussing on software and hardware assets ownership and connections to the end user, business processes as well as their access rights, software interfaces, data flows, data storage.

Senior Data Security Manager

As a Business Architect I represent the local business in IT programs, manage the information needs and flows, check IT-designs and set deliverables for information system refreshes and new deployments. I also support the organisation with migration planning and assist them in setting up user/factory/site acceptance tests.

Business Architect

As part of the Security team maintain, improve and extend the certified ISMS (ISO27001) and get other sites ready for certification. Grade, test and design IT security solutions. Liaise with Group Security on various security related matters.

IT Security Architect

Hack42 Non-Profit Foundation

Stichting Hack42 is the living computer museum and creative makerspace serving Arnhem and its vicinity. It's mission: facilitate an environment to bring likeminded people together and create 'awesome' things.
Check the #42 website for more information (Dutch) http://hack42.nl/

Co-founder & Treasurer 

Design and build solutions, migrate existing infrastructure and applications to a new SAP implementation. Keywords: BCP, SCP, VMWare Virtualisation, Interfaces, Cut-Over Planning, NAS, SAN, Backup, Resilience, Information Security

Senior Consultant / Solution Architect

Urenco Nederland BV

- Designed, Built, and Deployed a hardened Standard Operating Environment (SOE) for Linux based systems. This design required to be compliant with ISO27001 requirements.
For the SOE a set of supporting systems were required as well:
- Designed and built and finetune the centralised logging and alerting facility. Liaised with the Security management to define the correct levels of monitoring and visibility, which later on became the defacto standard for all platforms used.
- Implemented an update & upgrade deployment mechanism with high visibility on the update progress of Operating system, libraries, 3rd party software AND configurations.
- Designed and built a multi level backup & restore solution, including backup and restore procedures tailored to the business requirements. This solution was cross platform and included all network equipment as well (firewalls, routers).

Additionally:
- Designed and built the email filtering & blocking system. I programmed this myself using multiple open source technologies. The design checks outgoing email for certain keywords and also does advanced OCR.
- Did regular penetration tests of network and software solutions, later on managed penetration testing efforts by 3rd parties.

Engineer for Snow BV

IAAC

Interim IT Manager

Stone-IT

For medium to small businesses delivered streamlined Linux based solutions ranging from mail servers to access gateways and application servers. Implementations for over 250 projects.
Architected, built, and maintained the multi node high performance web cluster based on Linux Virtual Server and other open source technologies for the dutch eBay (marktplaats.nl). 
Additionally did penetration testing of networks, SCADA/ICS, and web applications, wireless communication networks (2G, Wi-Fi) for ~60 clients.
Developed and ran Pro-Active Monitoring v2, a Linux server health monitoring system tailored for small business servers that used Dial-up internet, which generated weekly and monthly health reports on Linux-based assets.

Consultant

NDI is a Windows IT solution provider. Designed, built, and deployed solutions for 100+ clients, from standard office solutions, to Remote Access Servers. Additionally did penetration testing for 50+ programs, from dial-up infrastructure, to mail servers, application services, thick client application deployments, and networks. Sectors: commerce, healthcare, education, government.

ROC Amsterdam

Taught Unix (HP-UX) & Linux system installation and administration for two semesters to 3rd year vocational students. Taught development (C++), Novell Netware administration, Windows NT Administration.

IT Trainer

Ferdinand Hagethorn built and heads the Cybersecurity practice for Planit Global. Planit is a quality assurance company operating in Australia, New Zealand, India Philippines, and the UK. This is where he defined and established the Security Testing practice and services clients both nationally and worldwide from windy and beautiful Wellington, New Zealand.

With a strong focus on the pragmatic and holistic approach, Ferdinand has successfully built the security capability and service offering for Planit Testing, providing DevSecOps, CREST ANZ accredited Penetration testing, Cybersecurity strengthening. 

Ferdinand also provided IT and Information Security Services for over 850 projects during a career spanning 25 years, in 7 countries throughout Europe, North America, and Australasia. 

Background: Hacker & Penetration Tester, Software engineer, Linux Specialist, Solution design and service delivery, Enterprise Security Architecture.

Co-founder of Hack42, makerspace and computer museum in Arnhem, The Netherlands. Speaker at various events, occasional guest lecturer at Victoria University Wellington. Working group member for the NZQA Cybersecurity qualification.

Comprehensive understanding of Cybersecurity and information security and using extensive experience and knowledge to provide business-driven design and implementation, migration planning, testing and execution at the highest levels.

Ferdinand welcomes all inquiries regarding Cybersecurity, speaking opportunities, and Enterprise Architecture. Holds NL nationality and NZ Permanent Residency and speaks three languages.

taplio

The Battle

Dani Woolf

Ferd Hagethorn, Ing.

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