Donavan is a versatile mentor who has helped numerous mentees secure cybersecurity jobs in the market and pushing mentees to do beyond what they thought was possible.

He has a demonstrated success in mentoring juniors to obtain jobs, certifications necessary for job roles as well as provided juniors opportunities to present at cybersecurity conferences (DEFCAMP, SINCON).

His day role involves threat and risk assessments, penetration tests and looking into automated cybersecurity compliance with the help of AI. His expertise spans government, aviation, transportation, defense, and financial sectors.

He has contributed to the open-source cybersecurity community, including creating vulnerable machines on Vulnhub from 2018 to 2021. He's a frequent speaker at conferences in multiple countries such as SECCON (Japan), DEFCAMP (Romania), GCC 2025 (Taiwan), Seasides 2025 (India), and SINCON (Singapore), addressing both technical and strategic cybersecurity topics. He also conducts career talks to inspire students to pursue cybersecurity careers.

At Thales, he led the development of "Defend the Breach" (DTB), a cybersecurity gamification experience where players role-play as CISOs making complex decisions. He's been on VULNCON's advisory board since 2024, providing technical thought leadership and moderating executive-level panels on cybersecurity's future.

His expertise has been recognized in "The Pentester Blueprint" and by Offensive Security. He contributes to ISC2's Unified Body of Knowledge (UBK) and writes articles for ISACA on various cybersecurity topics, including post-quantum cryptography and the intersection of social sciences and cybersecurity.

His credentials include OSCE3, OSCP, CISSP, and CRISC certifications. He currently pursues a Master's in Cybersecurity at Georgia Tech (OMSCY).

For more information about Donavan, visit his website at https://donavan.sg and his cybersecurity blog at https://donavan.sg/blog.