Photo: Microsoft PDC, CC BY 2.0I’m the CTO and Deputy CISO of Microsoft Azure and a Technical Fellow at Microsoft. I lead the technical strategy and architecture for Azure, one of the world’s largest cloud platforms.
I’m widely recognized for creating the Sysinternals suite of utilities for Windows, including Process Explorer, Process Monitor, Autoruns, and ZoomIt. These tools remain essential for IT professionals and developers worldwide.
I was born in Salamanca, Spain, and raised in Birmingham, Alabama and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I earned degrees in computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before completing a Ph.D. in computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon.
In 1996 I co-founded Winternals Software and Sysinternals with Bryce Cogswell, creating and publishing tools such as Process Explorer, Process Monitor, Autoruns, RootkitRevealer, and LiveKD. I joined Microsoft in 2006 when Winternals was acquired.
Since joining Microsoft, I’ve spent nearly two decades helping build Azure into one of the world’s largest cloud platforms. I was Azure’s founding CTO, driving the technical architecture behind its compute, storage, networking, and datacenter infrastructure from its earliest days through its hyperscale growth. I later took on the additional role of Deputy CISO, applying systems-level security expertise to protect Azure and its customers, and in recent years I’ve focused heavily on the architecture and security of Azure’s AI infrastructure, including the systems behind Microsoft’s large-scale AI offerings.
My investigations into Windows internals and security issues helped expose the Sony BMG rootkit and other high-profile problems in commercial software. I’m the co-author of the Windows Internals series, Windows Sysinternals Administrator’s Reference, and Troubleshooting with the Windows Sysinternals Tools, and the author of the Jeff Aiken cyberthrillers: Zero Day, Trojan Horse, and Rogue Code.
Current Focus
My current work spans several areas:
- Azure Architecture & Strategy — Technical direction for Azure’s compute, networking, storage, and AI infrastructure
- AI Security & Safety Research — Agent security, jailbreaks and red teaming, machine unlearning, and LLM robustness
- AI-Assisted Development — Pushing the boundaries of AI-assisted engineering, contributing to ZoomIt and PowerToys
- Podcasting — Co-hosting Scott & Mark Learn To with Scott Hanselman