From his first reluctant job inside a high school basement computer lab to co-founding one of the industry’s most recognized managed detection and response (MDR) companies, Keith McCammon, Chief Security Officer and co-founder of Red Canary, has built a cybersecurity career without a single hour of formal training. Instead, he relied on curiosity, persistence, and a deep love of solving complex problems — traits that shaped both his personal journey and the companies he helped create.
How Red Canary Emerged From an EDR Pioneer
Red Canary’s origin traces back to Kyrus Tech, a firm known for advanced software development, reverse engineering, and data science. Kyrus created early Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) technologies and spun off Carbon Black in 2011 to commercialize them. By 2013, customers needed help acting on the threats Carbon Black identified, leading Kyrus employees Brian Beyer, Chris Rothe, and Keith McCammon to launch Red Canary in 2014. The company focused on delivering MDR layered on top of Carbon Black’s telemetry.
Over the years, Carbon Black changed hands repeatedly — first acquired by Bit9, later by VMware, and ultimately integrated into Broadcom’s Symantec division. Red Canary remained independent until Zscaler acquired the company in August 2025, aligning its detection and response capabilities with the cloud security giant’s portfolio.
An Unlikely Path Into Cybersecurity
McCammon’s early life was filled with technology influences — his father worked at Bell Labs and his brother was a computer enthusiast — but he showed little interest until necessity pushed him to take a job maintaining a school computer lab. With no formal background, he relied on determination and problem-solving instincts to teach himself networking and system administration.
That experience led him to the telecom sector during the dot-com boom, just as cybersecurity threats were becoming more visible. Intrigued by the “hard and interesting problems” others were being called on to solve, he began gravitating toward security work. Soon he was tackling adversarial challenges full-time, learning on the job and developing expertise that would later shape his leadership roles.
His career progressed through national-security-oriented organizations, including ManTech, where he gained exposure to high-stakes offensive and defensive operations involving nation-state adversaries. He later joined Kyrus Tech, whose culture of experimentation paved the way for Carbon Black and ultimately Red Canary.
A Leader Without Formal Credentials
Despite lacking academic degrees in computer science or cybersecurity, McCammon argues that hands-on experience and mentorship were far more valuable.
“I’ve worked with incredible people who taught me,” he said. “It wasn’t brilliance — it was determination and a willingness to learn from others.”
He believes effective CISOs need a blend of technical insight, operational understanding, communication ability and business literacy. While having a “hacker mindset” helps, he cautions against executives relying exclusively on offensive backgrounds without understanding real-world constraints like budgets, human behavior and organizational culture.
McCammon is candid about the pressures of the CISO role, noting that burnout, scapegoating after breaches, and organizational politics make job stability precarious — especially in smaller firms. The most important traits for a security leader, he says, are clear communication and the ability to stay calm when everything around you becomes chaotic.
Mentorship, Delegation and Staying Positive
McCammon credits his mentors for demonstrating the value of distributed leadership. Delegation, he says, is not giving orders but teaching principles and trusting teams to act on them.
“People learn by making their own decisions and their own mistakes,” he said.
He encourages rising security professionals to resist cynicism — particularly the pervasive view that breaches are inevitable. Quoting Grace Hopper, he often tells new hires: “The best way to complain is to make things.”
Instead of dwelling on what’s missing, he advises building tools, processes or programs that move the organization forward. Maintaining positivity, he says, creates a “virtuous cycle” for both individuals and teams.
A View of Today’s Biggest Cyber Threats
While ransomware dominates headlines, McCammon argues it is merely the outcome of deeper, more dangerous trends. The most alarming development, he says, is the professionalization and versatility of cybercriminals.
He points to emerging tactics like ClickFix, where attackers use silent malvertising or drive-by techniques to manipulate users into granting access — exploiting trust instead of fear. These approaches reduce reliance on traditional phishing and make intrusion attempts more seamless and harder to detect.
Coupled with the rise of crime-as-a-service, which rapidly spreads sophisticated attack techniques throughout the criminal ecosystem, McCammon believes this professionalization represents a more serious threat than any single malware strain.
