Mika Ayenson
Threat Research & Detection Engineering Team Lead
Bixby, Oklahoma, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMika Ayenson is a threat research and detection engineering leader with 11 years of experience building and operationalizing security detection capabilities at Elastic and prior research roles at JHU Applied Physics Laboratory and Raytheon. Currently leading Elastic’s Threat Research & Detection Engineering team, Mika blends hands-on backend and security engineering with people leadership to ship reliable, standards-compliant detection rules and validation tooling. He has deep expertise in schema validation, rule integrity, and test-driven integration, evidenced by substantive contributions to Elastic’s popular detection-rules repository. Mika holds advanced degrees in computer science and is pursuing a PhD in Technology Innovation Management with a cybersecurity focus, bringing an academic rigor to practical, production-grade defenses. Based in Bixby, Oklahoma, he’s known for translating complex research into deployable detection frameworks that reduce operational risk.
11 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Technology Innovation Management Cyber Security, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Technology Innovation Management Cyber Security at Northcentral UniversityBachelor's degree Computer Science, Bachelor's degree Computer Science at Worcester Polytechnic InstituteMaster's degree Computer Science, Master's degree Computer Science at The University of Tulsa
Github Skills (14)
amazon-elasticsearch10
it-security10
elasticsearch10
elasticsearchquery10
schema-validation10
aws-elasticsearch10
threat-hunting10
python10
intrusion-detection10
malware-detection10
elasticsearch-api10
security10
kql9
testing8
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
elastic/detection-rules
Feb 2022 - Jan 2023
Role in this project:
Backend & Security Engineer
Backend & Security EngineerContributions:1138 reviews, 455 commits, 317 PRs in 11 months
Contributions summary:Mika primarily contributed to the enhancement of security detection rules within the repository. Their work involved modifying existing code to prevent unsupported features and implementing new methods to ensure compliance with security standards. They refactored and organized code related to schema validation, including adding new restricted fields and modifying the rule validation process to support the latest framework. Furthermore, the user demonstrated expertise in ensuring the integrity of detection rules by contributing to the testing suite and improving the integration.
security-toolselasticsecurityengine-detectionrules
elastic/DaC-Reference
Mar 2024 - Mar 2025
DaC Repo to store the reference documentation and detection-rules management with Elastic rules.
Contributions:11 reviews, 10 PRs, 64 pushes in 1 year
automationdacelasticsecurity
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