Ms. Barbara Hunt is a retired Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Executive Technical Expert and program manager with over 20 years experience in the fields of cyber, information and telecommunications technology, and operations. Her last position in the Intelligence Community (2008-2012) was as Director of Capabilities for Tailored Access Operations at the National Security Agency (NSA’s offensive cyber mission). As a member of NSA/TAO’s senior leadership team, Ms. Hunt was responsible for end-to-end development and capabilities delivery for a large-scale computer network exploitation effort.  She provided the technical and operational foundation for their computer network operations.

As the Senior Technical Advisor for the National Clandestine Service (the operations and intelligence collection directorate) at CIA, Ms. Hunt created an overarching strategy for technology management for the National Clandestine Service (NCS). This activity helped provide strategic direction to operational components for their use in developing and implementing coordinated plans of action, which bolstered innovation, common vision, collaboration, resource management and information sharing.

In parallel, Ms. Hunt spent over seven years as the program manager and senior technical targeting officer working to exploit a global telecommunications network.  This was a multi-agency effort, which was highly successful in gaining access to critical data related to terrorist organizations that is being used to protect our country from current and future threats.

Ms. Hunt was also a senior program manager developing and implementing disguised, non-USG appearing, telecommunications capabilities to enable multiple operational missions for both CIA and NSA.  Several of these capabilities are still in use today.

Prior to government service, Ms. Hunt worked in the telecommunications industry and was a program manager in the implementation of one of the first national long-haul fiber optic networks.   Ms. Hunt has a BE in Engineering from Vanderbilt University.

Ms. Hunt founded NetAbstraction (formerly Cutting Edge CA) in 2012 to provide leading edge, innovative, identity and user location protected access to the Internet and cyber threat mitigation capabilities.  NetAbstrraaction is a “carrier” class network service that protects your identity, your physical location, and provides additional security for your communications on the Internet.  Ms. Hunt is the inventor on five patents for the unique network architecture and design that allows NetAbstraction to both protect your identity and location while also improving your network performance when reaching to the Internet or in the cloud.