AJ Yawn

AJ Yawn

AJ Yawn is Partner In Charge, Product & Innovation at Armanino LLP, and a Founding Board Member of the National Association of Black Compliance and Risk Management Professionals (NABCRMP). AJ has earned 6 AWS certifications including the AWS Solutions Architect-Professional and AWS Security-Specialty. Prior to ByteChek, AJ spent over a decade in the cybersecurity industry both in the US Army and as a consultant. He is a regular speaker for SANS Cloud Security curriculum events such as BIPOC in Cloud Forum and CloudSecNext Summit, and a co-chair of the New2Cyber Summit 2022.

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Like many in cyber security, AJ feels the industry found him, rather than the other way around. As a Signal Officer in the US Army, AJ was thrown into helping solve challenging cybersecurity issues faced by him and his soldiers. The work was exciting due to the ever-changing technology and constant uncomfortableness that promoted development. After serving nearly 6 years in the Army, AJ chose to continue on the cybersecurity path due to the challenges and growth that comes with it by starting with a Masters of Science in Technology Management from Georgetown University. Simultaneously, he began working as a Principal in SOC-ISO-Healthcare for Coalfire developing and auditing control frameworks. He has performed hundreds of audits including assessments covering SOC 2, ISO, PCI, FedRAMP, and HIPAA standards or regulations. These audits were performed on some of the largest SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS companies in the world and throughout that process he learned that manual audits are painful and do not add value.

In 2020, AJ co-founded ByteChek – a cybersecurity SaaS company hosted on AWS - to “help compliance suck less” through an automated compliance assessment platform that helps organizations of all sizes solve their compliance needs and earn reports such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, CSA STAR Level 1 and Level 2, and more.

AJ’s focus in cyber security is on the people, not the credentials. Beyond customers, AJ is proud to support interns working to enter the industry in order to gain hands-on experience. Watching others develop, move on to bigger and better things, and knowing he has positively impacted a person’s life is part of AJ’s motivation to become a SANS Instructor. He works to build meaningful relationships that positively impact the lives of real people while improving their daily work. He brings this approach into the classroom through a community focused, shared learning experience that encourages collaboration and open communication among students and instructor, as each has something to teach the other.

AJ is a Founding Board Member of the National Association of Black Compliance and Risk Management Professionals (NABCRMP), an Advisory Board member for CISOMag, on the Board of Directors of the ISC2 Miami Chapter, and speaks on/at information security podcasts and events while also contributing to blogs and articles including publications in CISOMag, InfosecMag, HackerNoon, and ISC2. He holds the following industry certifications: