Katie Paxton-Fear

Speaker Bio

Dr Katie Paxton-Fear is an ethical hacker and security researcher with a background in software development, specializing in breaking real-world applications. In her own words she used to make applications and now she breaks them. She is a Staff Security Advocate at Semgrep, where she works directly with customers to help them stomp out security bugs for good.

Her PhD is in natural language processing and cyber security, and her research work focused on threats and risks to novel computing, from AI to robotics. Her work has also attracted funding from the UK government and she regularly publishes her academic work in scientific journals.

Katie has consulted with and delivered training to some of the world’s largest organizations, led high-impact technical demos, and advised leaders on security strategy. She is a regular speaker at major industry conferences, and her RSA session, “I’m an API Hacker and Here’s How I Hack Everything from the Military to AI,” was voted a top session. Katie has been featured as a subject-matter expert by The Wall Street Journal, BBC News, and ZDNet, and BBC Panorama.