Hi there! I’m Mika Ayenson.

I live in the US in the South, where I Search, Observe, and Protect.

As a 90s kid I was always taking things apart. My father was in the STEM world and so we always had several computers in the house. At first I thought I wanted to be a game developer. My dad introduced me to a game called Dangerous Dave and I was hooked. I spent hours trying to beat that game, which naturally led to more hours on the keyboard.

At one point early before college, I wished I attended a highschool International Baccalaureate program for the computer science classes alone, but I believe the Cambridge program rounded out my education and prepared me for the University phase of my life. I obtained my B.S. in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in New England, and then traveled to Oklahoma to obtain a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Tulsa’s Cybercorp program.

Before taking off back to the East Coast for work, I met the love of my life AJ. I learned a lot about myself and what I wanted out of life, which in part was shaped by my wife’s completely different background being an Oklahoma native. For the next 8 years I worked at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory focusing on software development and cyber missions operations. A year before starting my next adventure, I hit two major milestones in my life. I completed my Ph.D. and introduced my son August to the world.

Today, I work at Elastic as a Security Research Engineer. I started as the Detection Enablement and Development Area lead of the Threat Research & Detection Engineering (TRADE) team, and since then have transitioned to the team lead of TRADE. I love what I do as a software developer, detection engineer, researcher, etc. but most importantly, for once in my life, I’ve found balance and I’m happy to be able to spend time with my family and friends, despite the pandemic we all experienced. That could be binging all of Star Wars, bike rides with my wife and son, and hopefully when my son is a bit older, get back to traveling the world.