Vanessa Sauter is a security strategy analyst at Cobalt.io, a Pentest as a Service company, where she focuses on application security and blue teaming. She previously worked at the Brookings Institution and the Aspen Institute in Washington, DC, where she specialized in cybersecurity policy and national security law. Her interest in web application vulnerabilities stems from her work researching and writing about APTs. Vanessa graduated from Columbia University in 2016 and worked at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism for three years. Her writing has been cited in numerous publications, including The Washington Post, Forbes, and Lawfare.