Nicole Perlroth Biography
Nicole Perlroth is an award winning cybersecurity expert. She is a former lead cyber-security reporter for The New York Times, and is now a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity Advisory Committee. She is also a published author of “This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends.”
Perlroth has no technical background in cyber weapons but ended up covering tech firms because she wanted to return to the West Coast. She was an editor at Forbes based in New York and wanted to return to the Bay Area when she got an invite to a job interview as a cybersecurity reporter by The New York Times. She ended getting the job as she could explain cybersecurity issues in an accessible, not-too-technical way for a non-technical audience.
Nicole Perlroth Age
Perlroth is 36 years old, she was born in 1988 in Nellore, Andra Pradesh, India. She celebrates her birthday on May 26.
Nicole Perlroth Education
Nicole graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor’s degree in Politics and Near Eastern Studies. She also holds a M.A. in Journalism from Stanford University.
Nicole Perlroth Family
Nicole is the daughter of Dr. Mark G. Perlroth and Karen A. Perlroth. Her father is a cardiologist and a specialist in internal medicine with over 62 years of experience. He graduated from Harvard Medical School. He is a visiting professor at Marie Curie University School of Medicine in Paris.
Her mother, Karen is a postural expert and president at Mendendik Enterprises. She is trained in the Netherlands and in the US in the science of body-mechanics and motion, specializing in Back Fitness and Posture Improvement. She has taught at Stanford University School of Medicine, Canada Jr. College, San Jose State University and several Bay Area Nursing Schools. She also offers corporate seminars on Back Pain Prevention. Has Taught Childbirth Education. Teaches Pre-Natal and Post-Partum Care. Teaches one-on-one private classes with occasional home visits.
Nicole Perlroth Husband
Nicole is married her husband Heath David Thomson in July 2015. Heath is a professional chef who has trained at several Michelin-starred restaurants including Spruce and The Village Pub in the Bay Area. He is a partner and director of business development at CFH, Ltd. where he focuses on strategic partnerships, operations, marketing, and team dynamics.
He is also a partner and director at Chugach Powder Guides, an Alaskan heli-ski guide company, where he provides strategic planning, business development, and product design expertise. He was also the founder, chief executive, and head chef of Metes & Bounds – Table to Farm, a Silicon Valley-based events and hospitality start-up.
Nicole Perlroth Children
Perlroth has two children a son born in 2018 and another born in 2023.
Nicole Perlroth Cybersecurity
Nicole is a former award-winning cybersecurity reporter for the NY Times. Her investigations rooted out Russian hacks of nuclear plants, airports, elections, and petrochemical plants; North Korea’s cyberattack against movie studios, banks and hospitals; Iranian attacks on oil companies, banks, critical infrastructure, and presidential campaigns; and thousands of Chinese cyberattacks against America’s critical infrastructure and businesses, including a months-long hack of The Times.
Her early assignment that made an impression was in 2013 when she reported on the hacking of the paper’s servers by China. During the that time she realised that cyber espionage was like a 9-to-5 job for Chinese hackers. When the story began, they thought the hackers was trying to find a way to turn off the paper’s printing press or sabotage its operations, but they later concluded it was an espionage incident, aimed at discovering the sources for a series of stories about corruption and the Chinese Communist Party.
Her investigation and ensuing outing of hacking divisions within China’s People’s Liberation Army helped compel the first United States hacking charges against members of the Chinese military, and earned her the prestigious “Best in Business Award” from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Her investigation, with Azam Ahmed, of the use of commercial spyware in Mexico was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
Before joining The Times, she was a deputy editor at Forbes Magazine, an analyst at the Corporate Executive Board, a subsidiary of Gartner, and worked for the late Senator Ted Kennedy. She serves on the board of the Searle Scholars Program, which offers grants to support independent biomedical sciences and chemistry research of exceptional young faculty.
She began her journalism career with a tabloid expose on food. At the time, she was taking a nighttime journalism class at New York University taught by a New York Post columnist who suggested researching fancy New York City restaurants that had health violations. At the time, she was working in marketing at the fashion company Coach. In the evening she began poring over records from the Department of Health until she found a restaurant in Chelsea that had a terrible report. She talked to the owner, who told her the inspector came in, got drunk at the bar, passed out, and then gave the restaurant an abysmal report to justify why he had spent several hours there — and it was all on video. That story became Perlroth’s first byline, a freelance piece in the New York Post that ran under the headline “It’s Inspector ‘Snooze’-eau.”
She has lectured at Stanford University, including the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she co-authored a case study on the hack of Home Depot. She has also lectured at Princeton University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard Kennedy School, Hult International Business School, The Fletcher School at Tufts University, the Naval War College, Fordham Law, the University of California, Berkeley, John Hopkins Medical School, Cornell University Medical School and was selected as the inaugural “Journalist in Residence” for the University of Texas Strauss Center’s Journalism and World Affairs program and the Jeanette Pontacq Investigative Journalism Fellow.
Nicole Perlroth CISA
Nicole is an advisor to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). In the position, she hopes to help establish a program for private-sector cybersecurity experts to spend some time in government and develop other pathways to recruit technical minds to work for the government.
In addition, she is a managing partner at Silver Buckshot Ventures, an investment-advisory cyber mission fund backing next-generation cybersecurity startups that, together, take out every tool in an attacker’s arsenal.
She is also a Venture partner at Ballistic Ventures, which helps cybersecurity entrepreneurs cut above the noise, home in on their message, and unleash the innovation required to climb the way out.
Nicole Perlroth Book
Perlroth is the author of This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race which won the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award in 2021. The book traces the market for cyber weapons and vulnerabilities — flaws in code.