Ben Johnson is CTO and co-founder of Obsidian Security, a rapidly growing cybersecurity startup that provides identity intelligence. Johnson is also technical amicae on the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA). Prior to founding Obsidian, he co-founded Carbon Black where he led efforts to create the powerful capabilities that helped define the next-generation endpoint security space. Prior to Carbon Black, Ben was an NSA computer scientist and later worked as a cyber engineer in an advanced intrusion operations division for the intelligence community.
Johnson has extensive experience building complex systems for enterprise environments where speed and reliability are paramount. He has a depth of technical agility, having worked on advanced operational teams supporting US national security missions and writing complex calculation engines for the financial sector. As a serial start-up founder and head of Obsidian’s engineering operation, he still writes production-quality code.
Johnson earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Chicago and a master’s degree in computer science from Johns Hopkins University.
