From BBS to Mastering Red Team Operations with Mike Ortiz

Mike Ortiz joins Phillip Wylie to discuss his journey from the early BBS and IRC days to the U.S. Marine Corps, global defense contracting, and ultimately becoming a red team operator specializing in adversary emulation and red team engineering. Along the way, Mike shares how his background in networking and enterprise infrastructure helped shape his approach to offensive security and why understanding both attack and defense is critical for today's cybersecurity professionals.

The conversation explores the differences between penetration testing and red teaming, why "assume breach" exercises provide greater value for mature organizations, and how modern threat actors operate with patience, stealth, and persistence. Mike also explains how cloud automation has transformed red team infrastructure and introduces Red Stack, his open-source project that simplifies deploying professional red team environments for training and research.

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Connect with Mike Ortiz:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-ortiz-redsec
Red Stack: https://github.com/BaddKharma/redStack
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Connect with your host, Phillip Wylie:
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/phillipwylie
X: https://x.com/PhillipWylie
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phillipwylie