Joshua Copeland

Quadrant Information Security

Leading a diverse team of cybersecurity professionals delivering best-in-breed SOC, XDR, EDR, TEM, services. Driving sales by supporting presale activities and service evolution.

Director of Managed Security Services

Senteon: CIS Benchmarks

Advises on product development, marketing, and security.  
Works with the Marketing and Sales organization on pre and post sale engagement
Advising and collaborating with customer CISOs and other security leaders on strategic vision

Advisor and Field CISO

Tulane University

Teaching courses at the undergraduate and graduate level in the School of Professional Advancement's IT and Cybersecurity Programs.

https://sopa.tulane.edu/about-sopa/advisors-faculty-staff/joshua-copeland

Adjunct Faculty

Louisiana State Guard

Develop operations and training programs at the state level for the Cyber Reserve, including PME, Emergency Management, and Cybersecurity.  

Respond to statewide emergencies, both cyber-centric as well as natural disasters within the GOHSEP and Louisiana Department of Military frameworks.

Operations and Training Officer (S3), HQ Cyber Reserve

• Chief Warrant Officer 3 appointed as Team Lead for the Shreveport/GOHSEP Region 7 

•  The Louisiana Cyber Reserve, under the command of the Adjutant General of Louisiana, supports the LA National Guard Defense Cyberspace Operations Element (DCOE) to assist in Cyber Recovery & Remediation responses to eligible agencies and municipalities within Louisiana.

• To provide networking, education, & training that will strengthen the skill sets of IT professionals in Louisiana in order strengthen the defense posture and risk management mind set across the State, making
Louisiana more protected as there are no true boarders in the cyberworld. We are only as strong as our 
 weakest link, as a state and as a nation.

Region 7 Team Lead

Bose Corporation

•	Manage deep collaboration across Information Technology (IT), Product Security, and Business Partners to execute strategic security priorities and drive continuous improvement of cybersecurity program.

•	Manage a team of 40-50 security professionals serving all aspects of security operations globally

•	Active management of external partnerships that serve in partnership to manage and monitor 24/7 security operations.

•	Collaborate with the Security Strategy & Planning teams to develop roadmaps, enhancement strategies, and other transformational activities for the operations team

•	Lead holistic monitoring and detection capabilities for the security organization and the broader enterprise

Director of Enterprise Security

AT&T

Selected to lead the cybersecurity processes supporting a large state agency's network transformation.  Responsible to integrate cybersecurity baselines, best practices, GRC, and SSP within the division's various work streams related to the transformation and modernization program.

Security Director (Cyber)

SOC Director at AT&T's Custom Consulting Division - Cyber Operations. Providing cybersecurity services to multiple state and corporate customers in four independent tiered SOCs (Security Operations Center) and Content Engineering for SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) in a multi-tenant environment as part of a Managed Security Services (MSS) offering. Oversees the personnel management of 20+ Tier 2 analyst, 5 Tier 3 Analyst across multiple leveraged SOC environment.  Additional, oversees the multi-solution leveraged EDR service team focusing on SLTT customer based.

Security Operations Center (SOC) Director

Pinnacle Group, Inc.

SOC Operations Manager at AT&T's CyOps division. Providing cybersecurity services to multiple state and corporate customers in a tiered SOC (Security Operations Center) and Content Engineering for SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) in a multi-tenant environment as part of a Managed Security Services (MSS) offering.  Oversees the personnel management of 20+ Tier 2 analyst across 4 leveraged SOC environments.

SOC Operations Manager

Tier 3 Cybersecurity Analyst/Engineer Team Lead at AT&T's CyOps division.  Providing cybersecurity services to multiple state and corporate customers in a tiered SOC (Security Operations Center) and Content Engineering for SIEM (Security Information and Event Management)  in a multi-tenant environment as part of a Managed Security Services (MSS) offering.

Team Lead - Tier 3 Cybersecurity Analyst/Engineer

General Dynamics Information Technology

Leads a dynamic cross functional team providing subject matter expert level advice to assist management in aligning operational support with Enterprise requirements
Ensures a high performance, responsive and client-focused team
Fosters an environment of collaboration, inclusiveness and diversity through leadership, communications, and demonstrated behaviors
Contributes to the hiring, mentoring, performance management and retention of staff
Recommends and schedules technical staff assignments to complete support and project tasks, and verifies quality of the overall work products
Responsible for ensuring the security, integrity, and availability of information assets through the application of information security/information assurance policies, principles, and practices in the delivery of IT services and the rapid and effective response to security incidents.
Perform/review scans, review the results, and write necessary reports and plans.
Utilize approved vulnerability scanning tools and reports, to identify, remediate and report vulnerabilities/trends and to support remediation analytics.
Interface with client, and ensure effective communication.

Cyber Security Engineer Senior Advisor (Team Lead)

Designs and develops new systems, applications, and solutions for external customer's enterprise-wide cyber systems and networks with a focus on McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) and Tenable Nessus/Security Center.  Ensures system security needs established and maintained for operations development, security requirements definition, security risk assessment, systems analysis, systems design, security test and evaluation, certification and accreditation, systems hardening, vulnerability testing and scanning, incident response, disaster recovery, and business continuity planning and provides analytical support for security policy development and analysis. Integrates new architectural features into existing infrastructures, designs cyber security architectural artifacts, provides architectural analysis of cyber security features and relates existing system to future needs and trends, embeds advanced forensic tools and techniques for attack reconstruction, provides engineering recommendations, and resolves integration and testing issues. Interface with external entities including law enforcement, intelligence and other government organizations and agencies.

Senior Cyber Security Engineer

2d Communications Squadron, United States Air Force

Subject Matter Expert (SME) for cyber security and compliance in support HQ AFGSC, HQ 8AF, 2d Bomb Wing and associated tenant units.  Leads 17 personnel focused on comprehensive information protection serving as one of two assigned Information System Security Managers (ISSM).  Collaborates to ensure policy compliance to DoD policy, Air Force guidance,  and industry best practice standards utilizing defense industry standard processes as well as civilian mechanisms. Maintained the accreditation of two separate networks totally 16K users.  Directly responsible for the administration and management of Risk Management Framework (RMF), computer security (COMPUSEC), TEMPEST (formerly known as emission security EMSEC),  and DoD 8570 compliance programs .  Additionally, serves as the cyber security representative for the installation Threat Working Group (TWG).

NCOIC, Wing Cybersecurity Office

Subject Matter Expert (SME) for cyber security and compliance in support of  DoD/CIO's Department of Defense Cybersecurity Culture and. Compliance Initiative (DC3I) and Command Cyber Readiness Inspection (CCRI) requirements.  Specifically, to drive the  F3VA kill chain (find, fix, finish, validate, analyze), and executes process to the greatest extent possible across multiple technology areas. Additionally, serves as the cyber security representative for the installation Threat Working Group (TWG).  Selected to work with RAND Corporation to study the effects of cyber attacks on industrial control systems vulnerability and resulting mission impact.

NCOIC, Mission Assurance Cell

In my current function I oversees various IT Projects and specifically the Command Cyber Readiness Inspection program. Additionally, I also serve as the Senior Subject Matter Expert (SME) for all IT related issues for all Wing level inspection activities.

Senior IT Project Manager

Oversees the communication call center, IT maintenance support center, and IT hardware management functions. Supervises 40 military personnel responsible for 9,000 end users and $300M in IT assets. Serves as Unit SME on Physical, Personal, and Nuclear Security issues.

Section Chief, Client Service Center

Manages the units inspection program as well as holistically managing security.

Section Chief, Quality Assurance

Comprehensive IT support of Barksdale AFB's most Senior Leaders at HQ Air Force Global Strike Command, HQ 8th Air Force, 2d Bomb Wing and numerous tenet units.  Recognized as the Subject Matter Expert on BlackBerry Devices and "C" level support.

NCOIC, Executive Communications Flight

Manages all end user IT and telephone (POTS and VIOP) equipement installation and repair for 5000+users with over 7,500 end point devices.  Subject Matter Expert on BlackBerry mobile devices overseeing a BlackBerry Enterprise Server with 430 users.

Directly oversees a team of 30 Military and Contractor technicians.  Develops work flow, priorities, and training requirements.

Noncommissioned Officer in Charge, Client Systems

Comprehensive IT support of Barksdale AFB's most Senior Leaders.  Recognized as the Subject Matter Expert on BlackBerry Devices.

NCOIC, Information Management

United States Air Force

Computer Operations Supervisor

NCOIC, Resource Management

A cybersecurity leader and engineer with 25 years of experience, with a focus on holistic cloud and on-prem security approaches and specific expertise in building and operating security stacks, SOC operations, and cybersecurity governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) processes.  Key focus areas are building multi-faceted and diverse teams that translate the "bits and bytes" into "business capabilities and requirements." 

In my previous positions, I managed cybersecurity teams from 1 to 100+, oversaw physical, personnel, and cyber security programs, as well as traditional operational IT functions.  In these roles, I directed the organizational-level security and long-term compliance processes.

Since 2021, I have been the purveyor of #unpopularopinions as the "Unpopular Opinion Guy" SM or "UOG" on LinkedIn, covering topics like hiring, mentoring, and cybersecurity. 



Specialties: Cybersecurity, Risk Management, Information Assurance, Virtual Private Network (VPN), Desktop Support, ePO/HBSS,  Security Center/ACAS,  Policy, McAfee ESM SIEM, Devo SIEM,  Project Management, Social Engineering, Pen Testing, Secure Communications, Remote Desktop Support, Physical/Personnel Security, Hardening, DISA STIGs. 

Previous held TS/SCI Clearance, Public Trust, and CJIS.

Disclaimer:  Any opinions and posts expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer, vendor, or sponsor.

It is pre-Friday and It is a beautiful day here in Dallas.  Its time again for some more #unpopularopinion: #DataSecAI is the wake-up call cybersecurity needed.

Everyone keeps talking about AI like it’s some new frontier in cybersecurity.

But here’s skeleton in the closet…AI isn’t changing security…AI is exposing how bad we’ve been at securing data all along.

For years we acted like “data security” was a niche discipline.
A checkbox.
A compliance slide.
Something you throw at the DLP team and hope for the best.

Then GenAI showed up…
And suddenly we realized our data sprawl is massive.
Our controls are shallow.
Our governance is duct tape.
And our guardrails were built for an era where humans were the only ones reading sensitive information.

DataSecAI is the first conference I have found where people finally said the quiet part out loud: If we don’t get data security right, AI will punish us for it.

Not because AI is malicious: but because AI is fast, blind, literal, and obedient.

Feed it garbage, it scales garbage.
Expose it to sensitive data, it memorizes sensitive data.
Point it at the wrong repository, and it will happily turn your entire crown-jewel dataset into a training example.

But here’s the hype part:

If we do this right, AI becomes the greatest force-multiplier data security has ever had.

Automated classification.
Self-healing controls.
Real-time anomaly detection.
Adaptive access models that react faster than humans can even read the alert.

This isn’t the death of cybersecurity. This is the rebirth of it; rooted not in firewalls or dashboards, but in data intelligence, precision, and actual visibility.

So yeah, #unpopularopinion:

DataSecAI isn’t “another AI conference.” It’s the moment security finally realized the future isn’t securing systems; it’s securing the information those systems breathe.

BL: AI is about to make our mission both the biggest challenge
and the biggest opportunity of our careers.

Special shoutout to my buddy Rob Preta and Gabrielle Aura  for the invite and the amazing Cyera team at large for putting together a world class event 

#unpopularopinionguy

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