Maril Vernon

CSO contributor

Maril Vernon, known as the “One Woman Purple Team',' is an ethical hacker, co-founder and host of The Cyber Queens Podcast, senior offensive security engineer and proven program manager and pioneer in the purple teaming space — a niche in offensive security testing that has recently gained popularity demonstrating cyber resilience in the cyber threat landscape. Maril has built and tested purple teaming operations across multiple industries, from start-ups to FAANG-sized, most recently for Zoom Video Communications as a member of the dedicated red team. Maril’s expertise on red team best practices was recently featured on CSO Online and at the Red Team Roundup hosted by the Wild West Hackin’ Fest. Her knowledge and skill pioneering purple team operations has been featured on numerous webinars with the Plextrac CEO and Scythe CTO and at the subsequent Purple Team Roundup by WWHF. She has also been named one of the ‘Epic Women in Cyber’ and has interviews published with NIST and The Hacker Factory and is a contributing editor of the latest MITRE ATT&CKv11 Enterprise Matrix for Linux TTPs. Maril's passion for closing the gender gap in cyber is highlighted in her affiliations with The Cyber Guild, The Diana Initiative, BBWIC, and WiCyS.