Staff Spotlight: Jaxson Engelman

Keeping Clients’ Networks Secure

In the fight against cybercrime, businesses in Pennsylvania have a trusted ally in Intrada Technologies and their security team, featuring Jaxson Engelman.

Over the past year, cybercrime has grown exponentially. As cybercriminals have plotted and schemed, two members of Intrada Technologies’ skilled security staff, Jaxson Engelman and Adam Post, have closely watched trends, monitored networks, caught breaches, patched networks, and recommended security measures to protect clients. 

Jaxson’s keen interest in solving puzzles and passion to learn makes him well-suited for the challenges that security work brings. He enjoys the field so much that in his free time, he participates in “Hack the Box”, a cyber security training platform to learn how hackers think and how to best thwart their efforts.

Jaxson graduated from Pennsylvania College of Technology with a B.A. in Network Administration and Minor in Technical Support. While in school, he was a member of the Information Security Association and took courses in cybersecurity, policy writing (NIST) and ethical hacking.

Security piques Jaxson’s interest and attention because he loves the cat and mouse or attacker versus defender puzzles that come from work in the industry. Often, Jaxson locates vulnerabilities in companies’ systems and secures Intrada clients against attackers before cybercriminals cause damage.  

Jaxson actively seeks to learn something new every day - a goal inspired by his Pap, a treasured mentor who has encouraged him over the years to never stop learning.

To achieve that goal, Jaxson has earned certifications in PLESK, a course providing advanced knowledge of platforms Intrada uses for web hosting, and COMPTIA Security +, a certification teaching firewall configuration, encryption, recognizing malware and virus, and security best practices.

From these certifications, Jaxson learned both the technical and administrative practices needed to identify risks and methods to develop policies to improve organizations’ security postures.

His next certification will be in PenTest Plus – a certification that instructs security professionals on how to break in to and secure networks for companies.

What are a few best practices for companies or organizations to increase their security posture? Jaxson advises:

• Don’t reuse passwords and always meet the complexity requirements – upper case letter, lower case letter, eight characters, and a special character. Those passwords are the hardest to hack.
• Use BitWarden or LastPass to keep track of your passwords, so you are not tempted to reuse them.
• Reset passwords every 90 days.
• Meet the security requirements to keep a solid security posture.
• Schedule monthly vulnerability assessments to identify any potential risks. Scanning your network once a month, then developing a plan to fix the vulnerabilities will protect your organization now and in the future – saving time and money.

The Intrada Technologies team has a unique approach to security because each staff member brings different areas of technology expertise, a thorough understanding of security, and a solid set of security-minded policies to the table, Jaxson shared.

“I love the challenge and that no two days are ever alike,” shared Jaxson. “I like working with the [Intrada] team too. [We have] a fun, positive environment that provides clients with expertise in a bit of everything.”

Jaxson dons a figurative superhero cape in his free time by helping people find instances of hacking, assisting other system administrators, and “hacking for good.” He also enjoys hiking, being outdoors, programming, coding, web development, spending time with his grandparents, video games and strategy games, like Magic the Gathering.

No Bat Symbol, special red telephone or com-link is required to contact Jaxson and Intrada Technologies’ security team. Simply call the Intrada offices at (800) 858-5745.