More About Joel
Joel de la Garza is a partner focused on information security related investments and other chaos adjacent businesses. He believes information security is getting better with security products that combine usability and security, the move to the cloud, the rise of hardware-based multi-factor authentication, and other trends.
Prior to a16z, he was the chief security officer at Box, where he joined post Series B and scaled up through post IPO. From 2007 to 2013, Joel was the global head of Threat Management and Cyber Intelligence for Citigroup, where he built the first open and closed source intelligence center outside of the defense industrial base. He also ran incident response for Deutsche Bank and founded and worked at assorted security startups. He attended Stanford University where he studied Computer Science and German.
Latest Content
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In this AI + a16z episode, a16z's Zane Lackey and Joel de la Garza discuss how generative AI and LLMs could effect profound change in cybersecurity.
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Human nature fears the unknown, and with the rapid progress of AI, concerns naturally arise. Uncanny robocalls, data breaches, and misinformation floods are among the worries. But what about security in the era of large...
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In this episode of the AI + a16z podcast, Socket's Feross Aboukhadijeh and a16z's Joel de la Garza discuss the open-source software supply chain.
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Doppel is building a next-generation approach for detecting and removing fraudulent accounts and phishing attacks across various channels.
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Your CISO fights on the front lines against ransomware attacks, bears responsibility for data security amid tightening regulations, and serves as the key defense against some of the biggest existential threats your company faces.
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Nitin Natarajan is the deputy director of CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency), and has extensive experience in the cybersecurity space, including overseeing critical infrastructure for the U.S. Nation...
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In today's episode we’re talking about the latest developments and trends in cybercrime – including the trends of ransomware, and, attacks on physical infrastructure.
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We have two brief segments in today’s episode: News and analysis of the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine pause, and the widespread hack of Microsoft Exchange Servers across the country (and the dramatic and unusual steps the FBI took in response).
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How ransomware works, from the anatomy of a hack to how the groups operate; the role of nation-states, insurers, and regulators; and what to do if your stuff is taken hostage...
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In this special “3x”-long episode of our (otherwise shortform) news analysis show 16 Minutes, we cover the SolarWinds hack, one of the largest known hacks of all time... and the ripple effects are only now starting to be revealed, especially given latest news reports from the U.S. government. What actually happened, when does the timeline really begin? We help cut through the headline fatigue of it in this "anatomy of a hack" teardown -- the who, what, where, when, how -- from the chess moves to the step by step long game.
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Security is countercyclical: the business tends to boom while broader macro conditions deteriorate. But amid this year’s pandemic — including remote work and economic uncertainty for many — specific security trends (data...
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We're back to covering multiple items on our show 16 Minutes -- which covers the news, occasional explainers, and teases apart what's hype/ what's real -- as well as where we are on the long arc of innovation.
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A dive into the sociological, operational, and tactical realities of this murky underworld, Lusthaus and de la Garza discuss who the players are, what they are motivated by, and specialize in—as well as how basic ideas like trust and anonymity function in a world where no one wants to get caught. How do criminal nicknames function as brand? Which countries tend to specialize in what kinds of crime, and why? And most of all, what changes when you begin to think of the business of cybercrime as an industry?
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In this week's episode of 16 Minutes on the News with Joel de la Garza, in conversation with Sonal Chokshi, we discuss the security and privacy concerns around Apple and Google’s approach, called "privacy-safe contact tracing". Yet technology is not the biggest part of this discussion; it’s also about rights, cultures, and values... and the bigger questions around what happens when people are "transformed into cellphone signals".
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As the responsibility of CSOs has expanded, the role has moved from technical IT to the boardroom. How do the best CSOs prepare for and respond to a crisis, from redteaming to comms? What responsibility should cloud & SaaS vendors, not to mention the government, have in security and data breaches?
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Zoom has not only experienced unprecedented, rapid growth (from 10M to 200M daily active users) due to the coronavirus pandemic and shelter-in-place -- but is also seeing a shift in use cases from primarily enterprise to more consumer as well. At the same time, there have been several security issues and concerns around Zoom, including "zoombombing" porn; home-grown encryption; and key-management systems, servers, and engineers in China. What's hype/what's real in the headlines here? In this episode of 16 Minutes, a16z general partner David Ulevitch (former SVP/GM at Cisco), and operating partner for security Joel de la Garza (former CSO of Box) break it all down in 16+ minutes with Sonal Chokshi. What does it all mean for related tech trends in bottom-up SaaS -- from user onboarding and the flip side of "earning the right to be complicated" to pricing & packaging -- as well as for open source; and cloud security, particularly when it comes to video?
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We are in the midst of a rapid and unprecedented shift to remote work, what does this mean for security? How prepared are organizations? And what should each of us do to stay secure?
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We are in the midst of a rapid and unprecedented shift to remote work. What does it mean for security when the airgap between work and life is gone? How prepared are organizations? And what should security professionals...
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News and trends covered this week include: * Star Wars trailer in Fortnite, gaming, and future of social -- with @tocelot * Congress warns tech companies to take action on encryption, or else "we will impose our will on you" -- with @martin_casado @joeldelagarza
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This is the 14th episode of 16 Minutes, our weekly-ish news show where we quickly cover the top headlines of the week, the a16z Podcast way: what’s real, what’s hype from our vantage point in tech. This week, we cover the following news -- with a16z experts general partner Julie Yoo and market dev partner Venkat Mocherla from the bio team, and former CSO/ a16z security operating partner Joel de la Garza.
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Attackers look for the path of least resistance. Recently, that path has shifted from enterprise networks to you and your devices for two reasons. First, as we have built more secure software and systems, it has made it...
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This is the 13th episode of 16 Minutes, our weekly-ish news show where we quickly cover the top headlines of the week, the a16z Podcast way: what’s real, what’s hype from our vantage point in tech. This week, we cover the following news -- with a16z experts general partner Connie Chan and D'arcy Coolican from the consumer team, and former CSO/ a16z security operating partner Joel de la Garza.
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This is episode #9 of our news show, 16 Minutes, where we quickly cover recent headlines of the week, the a16z way -- why they’re in the news; why they matter from our vantage point in tech -- and share our experts’ views on the trends involved.
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This is episode #7 of our news show, 16 Minutes, where we quickly cover recent headlines of the week, the a16z way -- why they're in the news; why they matter from our vantage point in tech -- and share our experts' views on these trends.
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The recent Capital One data hack and breach that compromised sensitive information for 106 million people, including 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers, was executed by a single hacker who ex...
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This is episode #6 of our new show, 16 Minutes, where we quickly cover recent headlines of the week, the a16z way -- why they're in the news; why they matter from our vantage point in tech -- and share our experts' views on these trends as well.
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After headlines and heated discussions around large consumer breaches, the “death of the password” may be the second most common information-security (“infosec”) story out there. And it’s an old story: Bill Gates predict...
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Introducing our new podcast, 16 Minutes, a short news podcast where we cover the top headlines of the week, the a16z podcast way -- why are these topics in the news; what's real, what's hype from our vantage point; and what are our experts' quick takes on these trends?
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Synthetic fraud—yes, it's a thing: a new evolution of consumer fraud that’s been emerging in financial services, to the tune of $1-$2B a year. In this episode of the a16z Podcast, Naftali Harris, co-founder and CEO of Se...
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As everything that used to be just a "dumb object" now increasingly has coding in it -- from phones to fridges to door knobs -- what are the security challenges that are coming to the industry as a whole?
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Editor’s Note: These notes -- as well as information posted from the FS-ISAC newsletter (permitted to be distributed without restriction) -- were shared by operating partner (and former Chief Security Officer at Box) Joe...
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The idea of the cybercriminal as lone wolf or hobby hacker is no longer much of a reality. Instead, the business of cybercrime looks a lot more just like that -- a large, global technology business, with many of the asso...
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Given the heated discussions around security and the c-word (“cyber”), it’s hard to figure out what the actual state of the industry is. And clearly it's not just an academic exercise -- it is a matter of both business s...