Stuart McClure
Cylance, Inc.
Irvine, CA USA
"The trick and secret to life is literally as simple as never giving up."
Career Roadmap
Stuart's work combines: Engineering, Technology, and Learning / Being Challenged
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Day In The Life
Skills &
Education
Advice for getting started
This felt like a personal challenge and an opportunity for me to prove that all computer systems, no matter how secure, were all vulnerable. I didn't sleep for two nights and managed to hack into my coworker's system. This set me on the path towards cybersecurity.
Here's the path I took:
High School
Bachelor's Degree
Psychology, General
University of Colorado Boulder
Bachelor's Degree
Philosophy
University of Colorado Boulder
Bachelor's Degree
Computer Science
University of Colorado Boulder
Life & Career Milestones
My path in life took a while to figure out
1.
He clicked with his first high school programming class because coding made him feel like he had control over something—as a teenager, that was a feeling he rarely experienced.
2.
Later, while he was working as a teaching assistant in college, his computer was infected with the Morris worm, one of first widely spread computer worms.
3.
He was fascinated by the architecture of the worm, and started to reverse engineer it to figure out how it worked—that was his first foray into the world of cybersecurity.
4.
A friend started bragging that he had avoided the worm because his system was more secure, and Stuart took that as a challenge; within two days, he’d hacked into his friend’s system.
5.
He worked as chief technical officer for computer security software company McAfee, one of the largest, most well-known security technology companies in the world.
6.
But one day, someone asked him if he used McAfee software on his own computer, and he had to tell the truth—he didn’t use anything to secure his computer except his own brain.
7.
The more he thought about it, the more he started to realize that he could “teach” a machine to take most of the security precautions he took on his own, such as not opening malicious links.
8.
From that idea, he formed Cylance, the first company to apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to the world of cybersecurity.
Defining Moments
How I responded to discouragement
THE NOISE
Messages from Peers:
My computer system is way more secure than yours, you could never hack into it.
How I responded:
This felt like a personal challenge and an opportunity for me to prove that all computer systems, no matter how secure, were all vulnerable. I didn't sleep for two nights and managed to hack into my coworker's system. This set me on the path towards cybersecurity.
Experiences and challenges that shaped me
Growing up, I could never afford to own computers, so I learned everything I know about them from the computers at school.