Hustling in Cybersecurity with Lee Ayers

Today I’m chatting with Lee Ayers at the KDE office on Hale Street in Charleston, WV. Lee’s hustle is cybersecurity, and he also a partner at KDE. Lee tells me he’s a cybersecurity specialist for the state of West Virginia. I ask what his work involves, and he explains it includes constant learning and research, often spending hours in the lab.

Lee and a friend started KDE Technology to build websites, and cybersecurity is a crucial part of this work. They handle about 400 to 500 cyberattacks a year. They use systems to fend off these attacks, but manual intervention is also necessary. They reverse-engineer threats to understand and prepare for them.

I ask Lee if other hosting companies take cybersecurity as seriously as they do. He believes hosting companies might, but many development companies do not. He points out that websites built by marketing companies using platforms like WordPress are often the most hacked.

At KDE Technology, every website is built with a security focus. They penetrate test every website before launching it. Recent cybersecurity news includes the CrowdStrike incident, affecting over 8.5 million computers globally, which is record-breaking and devastating. This is the kind of issue Lee deals with in his day job.

Lee is also a published author. His book, Cyber Resilience, came out a few months ago. It’s a fictional story set in Charleston, about a cybersecurity firm fighting global cyber threats. Lee explains that all the hacking groups and vulnerabilities in the book are real. They aimed to make it accessible for non-tech people while still being appealing to tech experts.

I sense some autobiographical elements in the book, though Lee doesn’t see it that way. He believes it’s important to showcase the tech talent in West Virginia. Writing the book was challenging, especially transitioning from writing white papers to crafting a plot. The goal was to balance technical detail with readability.

Lee says writing the book was a fun project to highlight the tech industry in West Virginia. He believes some of the best technology professionals are from West Virginia. Our state’s proximity to Washington, D.C., and its centralized location are significant advantages. As we wrap up, Lee encourages people to buy his book, Cyber Resilience. He hopes readers enjoy it and provide feedback. The book is available on Amazon and other sites. I recommend it for anyone interested in cybersecurity or a good read.