The industry’s leading provider of cyber asset attack surface management (CAASM) technology, JupiterOne, has announced that CISO and Head of Research Sounil Yu was recognized with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the SANS Difference Makers Awards committee.

Sounil Yu is a security innovator with a deep knowledge of computer systems and a career spanning over three decades as an executive leader of information technology and security in the federal government, military, and private sectors. He may be best known for developing the influential DIE Triad and Cyber Defense Matrix, frameworks that have shaped the way the cybersecurity industry operates today.

The Cyber Defense Matrix, which is detailed in Sounil’s book of the same name and is the impetus for the upcoming Cyber Defense Matrix Conference in February, was initially developed while he was working as Bank of America’s Chief Security Scientist and further refined when he was CISO-in-Residence for cybersecurity venture capital firm YL Ventures. The matrix plots the five distinct functions of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover) against the five classes of assets in need of defense (devices, apps, network, data, and users) and includes a gradient of dependencies on technologies and on people across specific functions — all with the intent to provide a greater understanding of the entire cybersecurity landscape and where there may be gaps in coverage.

In addition to his work at JupiterOne, Sounil is a Board Member of the FAIR Institute, co-chairs Art into Science: A Conference on Defense, is a visiting fellow at GMU Scalia Law School’s National Security Institute, guest lectures at Carnegie Mellon University, and is an advisor to various startups. He joined JupiterOne in 2021 to serve as the company’s Chief Information Security Officer and lead its research practice.

The Difference Makers Awards ceremony was held at the SANS Cyber Defense Initiative conference in Washington, DC. This annual celebration is hosted by SANS to recognize the most dedicated and innovative people who made a difference in the cybersecurity community. The prestigious awards program honors individuals and teams who have made a measurable and significant difference in security. Each nominee was recognized as having raised the bar in enabling secure business operations and reducing risk through the implementation of security processes or technology.

Founder and CEO at JupiterOne, Erkang Zheng   said: “There is no one more deserving of this award than Sounil Yu. He’s one of the smartest people I have ever met and regularly makes the people around him better. We are privileged to have amazing people like him on the JupiterOne team to help us be as successful as we can be, and I sincerely congratulate him on his achievements.”  

CISO and Head of Research at JupiterOne, Sounil Yu commented:   “It is an honor to have been chosen by the SANS Institute from an impressive field of candidates who have all made significant contributions to our industry. While I don’t feel quite deserving of such accolades, I sincerely appreciate the SANS committee and everyone who voted for me. I hope to contribute more to the security industry in my remaining years.”