Thomas Iannone

Originally from Humboldt County, California, TJ moved to Hawaii when he was a teenager. He is a graduate of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey California where he focused on Tagalog Language and Malayo-Polynesian Linguistics, in addition to the Academy of Art University in San Francisco where he focused on Music Production and Sound Design. TJ is also a graduate of the Pennsylvania State University where he majored in Political Science, particularly International Politics with a focus in National Security Studies. He began his career in 2007 a cryptologic linguist, and has since worked professionally as an intelligence analyst in national security roles for 11 years and as a digital network analyst in a cybersecurity role for 3 years. He is currently working as an Innovation Engineer at Torchlight AI, and is aiming to re-enter the cybersecurity field in a senior or executive-level position. He is particularly interested in cryptography and artificial intelligence. He loves surfing, bouldering, traveling, and playing music in his spare time.

“TJ became an integral part of the joint NSA/FBI effort in combatting our cyber adversaries. TJ’s advanced analysis and in‐depth understanding of our targets' tactics, techniques and procedures helped shape and guide executive leadership decisions on where to focus investigative resources. This type of skillset is a testament to TJ’s craft built on many years of understanding cybersecurity principles and methods which allowed him to exploit any and all available intelligence to identify, collect, triage and process significant amounts of data which led to tangible results.”  – Supervisory Special Agent (Cyber Division), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) -August 2022.