With organizations facing an ever-increasing barrage of threats to their digital assets, the need for robust security solutions has never been greater – and Capitol alumnus Ken Kassing is on the front lines of that effort.
Kassing, a 2003 graduate, has recently taken up a new position as principal software engineer at Carbon Black, a Massachusetts-based firm that specializes in endpoint threat prevention, detection and response. The company won a 2014 award for Best Endpoint Protection Solution from the SANS Institute and was named as the top choice for incident response by 68% of professionals surveyed in a 2015 report.
Part of Carbon Black’s focus been on closing off the vulnerabilities that plague traditional antivirus software, Kassing said.
“A virus scan works by identifying the bad guys and blocking them,” he said. “The problem is that sometimes the bad guys aren’t recognized as such, and then the virus scan lets them through – allowing them to compromise your system.”
Carbon Black attacks the problem from the other direction. “Instead of trying to block the bad guys, our product recognizes the good guys and lets them through. If it doesn’t recognize you as one of the good guys, you’re not getting in,” Kassing explained.
The company’s other signature product – and the one Kassing is most directly involved with -- is a forensics monitoring tool. “It works silently in the background of your system and monitors everything that happens – any programs that run, any files that are open, any network traffic, and it sends all this information to a server. That way, if there is a breach, the staff that’s responsible for tracking the incident will be able to examine all the data on the server, allowing them to analyze how the attack happened and what was impacted,” he said.
Kassing, a Linux specialist, was hired by Carbon Black after a 15-year career at Patton Electronics, a Gaithersburg firm which specializes in helping customers interconnect legacy telecommunications systems with new-generation, IP-based technologies.
He followed a career path that has increasingly become the norm for university graduates: starting as an intern and gaining on-the-job experience, then moving to a full-time position and advancing through the organization. By the time he decided to make a job transition – in part due to a planned relocation to New England – he was running the software engineering department.
Kassing values Capitol’s practice of offering programs that are tailored to specific, emerging fields. “The courses were very focused in terms of what I wanted to do, and the small class sizes worked well for me,” he says.
After launching a successful career, he began to turn his attention to giving back and working with current students to map out their future paths.
Kassing has connected Capitol students to internships opportunities at his former employer, Patton. He is also a longtime member of Capitol’s Alumni Council, currently serving as vice president.
“I’m driven to help students make the most of their college experience and get the best value they can out of school,” Kassing says. “Beyond that, I try to help prepare them for their next steps, when they transition into their careers.”
On his most recent visit to campus, he participated in the Council’s “Breakfast for Lunch” event, in which students met with alums in an informal setting to discuss career-building strategies. Also present with Kassing were alumni Tom Bagg, Adam Meyer, Nicole Patton and Amie Seisay.
As Kassing talked with participants about the work that he does, he was surprised to find that some Capitol students were already very familiar with Carbon Black and its products.
“One of the students told me he uses our company’s products at his job,” Kassing said. “That was cool!”