SentinelOne offers a range of products and services to protect organizations against cyber threats, including a security platform named Singularity XDR that protects against malware, ransomware and other advanced persistent threats.
As a sales engineer for the company, Phillips said he’s looking forward to “having the opportunity to work with every aspect of the SLED environment on a more personal level, not just state agencies.”
For example, he said, “I’ve had the opportunity to work with local governments at a high level, but now I’m really looking forward to taking what I’ve learned at the FLDS [Florida Digital Service] level and applying it to all interactions to assist the rest of the state in improving their security capabilities, even if it takes one meeting at a time.”
Before joining SentinelOne, Phillips was a cybersecurity coordinator for Emergency Support Function 20 for the Florida Digital Service. According to state documents, this section of FLDS provides consultation and support to the State Emergency Response Team (SERT) and the State Emergency Operations Center (SEOC) for cybersecurity incident monitoring and response during SEOC activation.
Before that, he was a senior network security engineer for the state’s Cybersecurity Operations Center under FLDS and was an information security specialist and computer analyst for the Florida Department of Revenue.
He has also held positions as a business system analyst for the city of Tallahassee, a technical support specialist for GTO Access Systems LLC, a dock worker for YRC Freight and an infantry soldier for the United States Army.
As for how his prior experience will contribute to his new role, he said, “During my tenure at FLDS, I was part of the overall effort to build a state Cybersecurity Operations Center (CSOC) and unify state agencies in reference to threat intelligence sharing and cybersecurity threat monitoring.”
“More specifically,” he added, “I was a project lead for multiple capabilities that FLDS procured for the state, including endpoint detection and response and endpoint management. This enabled me to have the chance to work with multiple state agencies at one time, assisting them with implementation and configuration of the new CSOC capabilities.”
As a result, this experience has helped him gain “an immense amount of knowledge and respect for the state agencies, working with their IT leaders and professionals.”
Moving forward, Phillips said he’s focused on diving in and learning the ropes from the private-sector side.
“I want to get familiarized quickly so I can get out and start helping customers identify gaps and find a solution that will provide value but also bring effective cybersecurity monitoring and response,” he shared.
Phillips holds a Bachelor of Science in information technology from the University of Phoenix.
