As a computer hacker with more than 20 years of professional cybersecurity experience, Katie has a unique and unparalleled perspective on security research, vulnerability disclosure, bug bounties, and incident response.
Meet Our Founder & CEO
Katie Moussouris
Katie Moussouris founded Luta Security in 2016 fresh off the heels of launching Hack the Pentagon, the first ever bug bounty of the US government. She named her company after the local nickname of the CHamoru island of Rota, where her mother was born in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US Territory. Katie was born and raised in Boston, MA and was encouraged by her biochemist mother to study science. Her father was a Greek immigrant jeweler who taught her valuable lessons about running a bootstrapped profitable business. Katie fosters a company culture of equity and healthy boundaries, with all Luta Security FTEs paid for full time work with a 32-hour 4-day work week. She has grown Luta Security proving that businesses can be profitable by putting people first.
Luta Security can manage your vulnerability disclosure and bug bounty programs from end-to-end ...
Accomplishments
Katie serves in three advisory roles for the U.S. government as a member of the Cyber Safety Review Board, the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board, and the Information Systems Technical Advisory Committee. She is also a cybersecurity fellow at New America and the National Security Institute.
During her tenure with Microsoft, her work included industry-leading initiatives such as starting Microsoft Vulnerability Research, which formalized multiparty vulnerability and supply chain vulnerability coordination across hardware and software as well as launching Microsoft’s first bug bounty program. Katie is also the co-author and co-editor of ISO 29147 (vulnerability disclosure) and ISO 30111 (vulnerability handling processes). Working with the U.S. Department of Defense, Katie led the launch of the U.S. government’s first bug bounty program, "Hack the Pentagon." She also worked with the U.S. State Department to help renegotiate the Wassenaar Arrangement, specifically changing the export control language to include technical exemptions for vulnerability disclosure and incident response.
Katie is also the founder of the Pay Equity Now (PEN) Foundation, and through the PEN Foundation, Katie established the Anuncia Donecia Songsong Manglona Lab for Gender and Economic Equity at Penn State Law in University Park. Additionally, she served as a visiting scholar with the MIT Sloan School, a Harvard Belfer affiliate, and an advisor to the Center for Democracy and Technology. In 2018, Katie was featured in two Forbes lists: The World’s Top 50 Women in Tech and America’s Top 50 Women in Tech.
