INTERVIEW: A Q&A with Jason Keirstead
I started working deeply with technology in middle school, after we got our first PC. I think it was less than a year before I started learning about things like the open-source movement and had installed FreeBSD on it. While going through university, although I was trying to focus on programming, I still ended up with a number of internships in the networking and network security spaces as well as working in open-source communities like the KDE project. After I graduated, I joined a start-up called Q1 Labs that had a product in the network security space (that IBM ended up acquiring in 2011 after we had assumed a leadership position in the SIEM market). Over the two decades at Q1 Labs/IBM I had a number of different roles, from UI Architect, to product owner, to Chief Architect, eventually the CTO of Threat Management.