Jon Zeolla

Jon Zeolla is a technical founder with a long-running obsession: helping serious organizations use new technologies without turning into chaos.

He has been dealing with the same pattern his entire career, whether it was software, cloud, machine learning, or AI. Companies need to adopt new technology to make progress, and that technology needs to meet real requirements for quality, security, and governance.

During his time at CMU, Jon jumped headfirst into machine learning and large-scale data analysis. That path led him into open source and the cloud-native community, where he now serves as a CNCF Ambassador. He also travels internationally, teaching software developers, security engineers, and engineering leaders from over 100 companies across the Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500 how to secure generative AI applications and cloud-native platforms.

Today, Jon is the founder of Zenable, where he is building self-improving coding harnesses for enterprises. Zenable gives teams the insights and feedback loops they need to maintain coding standards, pass audits, and let developers keep using the IDEs they love.

Feel free to connect on LinkedIn.

Check out Jon’s presentations and trainings.

Awards

• 2023 Best Places to Work - Seiso

• 2023 Cybersecurity Innovator Finalist - Seiso

• 2022 Best Places to Work - Seiso

• 2021 Start-Up Innovator of the Year - Seiso

• 2017 NTHS Honorary Member

Community Building

• CNCF - Cloud Native Security Pittsburgh (YouTube channel) founder since 2023

• Steel City InfoSec (aka DC412) founder since 2012; see prior events here

• BSides Pittsburgh organizer since 2014

• PittSec founder since 2018

• CNCF TAG-Security and Ambassador

• CNCF TAG Contributor Strategy’s Deaf & Hard of Hearing Working Group (resources here)

• AWS Community Builder

Volunteer Work

• Cloud Native Security Con 2024 - Program Committee Member

• KubeCon/CloudNativeCon North America 2023 - Cybersecurity Program Committee Member

• CNCF TAG-Security Member since 2020

  • 2024-25 Automated Governance Maturity Model (announcement blog)

  • 2023 Pixie security review (Pixie)

  • 2022 Cloud Native Security Controls Catalog (issue 635, blog)

  • 2021 Serverless Security White Paper (issue 546)

• Kubernetes SIG-Security Policy Working Group Member since 2022 (sporadic)

  • 2023 Kubernetes Governance, Risk, and Compliance White Paper

• FBI Citizens Academy 2016 graduate

• Apache Software Foundation Committer since 2017

• NSF Grant #2000902 Advisory Board Member in 2022

• DataWorks Summit, CyberSecurity Track Chair in 2018

• CAMLIS Organizer in 2018

• CIS Apple iOS 7 Benchmark in 2013

• Forbes Road CTC Occupational Advisory Committee since 2012

• Pittsburgh Technology College advisory board 2011-2024

Open Source Software

• cookiecutter-python

• easy_infra

• goat

• zeek-kafka

• easy_sast

• Apache Metron (Archived)

Current Work

• Founder and CEO at Zenable

• Co-founder and CTO at Seiso

• Instructor at SANS

• Faculty member at IANS

Hobbies

• Weightlifting (>400 Wilks Coefficient, >1250lb combined at 180lb bw)

• Mountain Biking

• Chess

• Certifications and badges.