Shawn Nunley

Founder, Cloud Security Office Hours · Solutions Architect, Wiz · 42 years in tech starting at Read-Rite/Cybernex in 1984, with the last 30 specializing in security.

2,000+ CSOH members 150+ Friday sessions since ’23 17 employers across 42 yrs since ’84 in tech, ’96 in security

Shawn Nunley is the founder of Cloud Security Office Hours (CSOH), a vendor-neutral community of 2,000+ cloud security professionals that meets every Friday on Zoom. He launched it to give practitioners free, hands-on access to the kind of unfiltered, peer-to-peer conversations he wished he'd had earlier in his own career.

By day, Shawn is a Solutions Architect on the Majors team at Wiz, where he helps the world's largest enterprises secure their AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud footprints. Before Wiz, he held senior cloud security roles at CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks (Prisma Public Cloud), and RedLock — companies at the leading edge of CNAPP, CSPM, and cloud workload protection.

His career started in 1984 at Read-Rite/Cybernex writing MRP software for thin-film disk-head manufacturing — followed by stops at WYSE Technology and Rational Technology before joining Novell in 1988. The Novell years (1988–1996) covered systems programming, wide-area network engineering, and product marketing — including building (then) the largest private Frame Relay multi-protocol network in the world, and, as a young network admin, designing the careful voicemail trap that helped catch Kevin Mitnick.

From there he moved into formal security at Secure Computing in 1996, then spent the next thirty years through Exodus, NetScaler, Citrix, Verne Global, ZillionTV, Fusion-io / SanDisk, HyperGrid, Barracuda, RedLock, Palo Alto Networks, and CrowdStrike before landing at Wiz. Networking, storage, and security have been threaded through the whole arc.

I started CSOH because the conversations I needed early in my career didn't exist as a free, public, weekly thing. So I built it. — why CSOH exists, in one sentence

Career timeline

Seventeen employers across forty-two years — starting at Read-Rite in 1984 writing MRP software, into networking at Novell, formal security at Secure Computing in 1996, and (since 2018) full-time cloud security at RedLock, Palo Alto, CrowdStrike, and Wiz. CSOH was founded March 2023.

Shawn’s career timeline (1984-2026) Seventeen employers across forty-two years, color-coded by era, with the CSOH community founded March 2023 shown as a separate gold bar at the bottom. 42 years across 17 employers — programming, networking, security, cloud security 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 2016 2020 2024 Read-Rite/Cybernex IS Mgr · 1984–1986 WYSE Sr Apps Programmer ’86–’87 Rational VAX/VMS Consultant ’87–’88 Novell Sys Programmer → WAN Eng → PMM 1988–1996 · trapped Mitnick here Secure Computing SafeWord PM · ’96–’98 Exodus PD Mgr → Dir Research 1998–2001 NetScaler Dir of Tech Dev 2001–2005 Citrix App Delivery Evangelist · 2006–Jul ’07 Verne Global Boston · Jan–Jul ’08 ZillionTV Dir CSP · Jul ’08–Oct ’09 Fusion-io / SanDisk Sr. Staff Sales Engineer Oct ’09–Oct ’15 · acq. ’14 HyperGrid (was Gridstore) · ’16–’17 Barracuda Cloud Sec Arch · ’17–’18 RedLock Jun–Oct ’18 Palo Alto Prisma ’18–’21 CrowdStrike Feb–Aug ’21 Wiz Solutions Architect Aug ’21 → now ★ CSOH Mar ’23 → now
All seventeen employers across 42 years. The Novell era (1988–1996, dark amber) is where the Kevin Mitnick story actually happened. CSOH (gold) launched March 2023.

Areas of focus

Five areas where Shawn spends most of his pre-sales, architecture, and community time.

CSPM & CNAPP

Posture management, toxic-combination detection, runtime & agentless platform security at enterprise scale.

Multi-cloud architecture

AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud security architecture — IAM, networking, data protection, observability.

Vulnerability management

Cloud workload vulnerability prioritization — context, exploitability, blast radius beyond raw CVSS.

Pre-sales engineering

Customer-facing technical leadership — discovery, architecture review, POC design, exec-level communication.

Mentoring & community

Building free, vendor-neutral spaces for cloud security practitioners — CSOH, Friday Zooms, mentoring.

Connect

Best places to find Shawn: LinkedIn for messages, GitHub for the website source, the Friday Zoom for the community itself.