Phil Cohen

I have been involved with every aspect of JavaScript development, including web, server, mobile, and desktop, since the late 1990's. Development, testing, deployment automation, performance tuning, and security best practices are just a few of the activities I am involved with on a daily basis.

I have been working with Ruby for almost 15 years, and it has been my primary love for the majority of that time. I have built, tuned, scaled, and secured hundreds of Ruby applications, both Rails and otherwise. I have a deep understanding of the language, have taught numerous classes and workshops, and have created dozens of gems and libraries over the years.

I started building my first CMDB and automation scripts by hand in the mid-90's, and have lead architecture, development, testing, and validation of global and specially regulated infrastructures ever since. From low-level kernel tuning, to network design and optimization, to security design and compliance automation, I have managed everything from a single server to infrastructures with tens of thousands of nodes, and even a little "serverless" these days.

I started working with Amazon Web Services in 2002, and have since spent years working with the myriad of services offered by AWS, Azure, GCP, and others. I have designed and automated secure and scalable solutions on every major cloud platform, including private and hybrid clouds.

I have spent more than 10 years specifically focusing on many security-related aspects of technology, and held certifications ranging from Security+ to CISSP. My primary area of focus at the moment is web application security, including secure coding, automated security testing pipelines, secure infrastructure design, performing vulnerability assessments, and penetration testing.

I am a Zend Certified Engineer with 20+ years of experience working on all aspects of PHP application development. I have written multiple frameworks over the years, and have worked with most major application frameworks including WordPress, Zend, and Drupal. I also have a focus on PHP security including secure coding principles and framework vulnerability assessments.