About

Kevin Mandia ’92, founder and CEO of the Mandiant cybersecurity company, has been featured in the top story on the New York Times website. Mandiant has released a 60-page report claiming that a military unit in China’s People’s Liberation Army located in an office just outside Shanghai is responsible for numerous cyber attacks on American corporations, organizations, and government agencies.

Read “Chinese Army Unit Is Seen as Tied to Hacking Against U.S.”

Kevin Mandia ’92

Mandia started his company in 2004 after 13 years in the industry. He’d worked as a computer security officer for the U.S. Air Force, followed by high-level stints overseeing computer forensics, incident responses, counterintelligence, and litigation support for Sytex (Lockheed Martin) and Foundstone (MacAfee).

“There was a market opportunity,” Mandia says about his leap into entrepreneurship. “No other company had grasped the inevitable reality of computer intrusions.”

The company has grown to an internationally lauded business based in Alexandria, Va., with 300 employees in offices across the U.S. and in Ireland. Clients include government agencies, high-profile individuals, and private companies. They’re attracted by Mandiant’s niche: “The only information security company that can both tell a company when it has been compromised and tell what the material impact of the breach is.”

Mandia, a computer science graduate, holds a master’s in forensic science from George Washington University. He is co-author of Incident Response: Investigating Computer Crime and articles for The International Journal of Cyber Crime. He has been featured on CNN’s “Talkback Live” as well as news programs on NBC, CBS, and Fox.

For his success, Mandia received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2011 Greater Washington Award in the technology division. Previous winners, in different cities, have included Starbucks’ Howard Schultz and Rosetta Stone’s Tom Adams.