Leadership.
Bit Fellowship is led by its founder, Sean Harris, a cybersecurity and compliance executive, educator and speaker who has spent twenty years running the systems he now helps others protect.
Sean Harris, Founder
Sean spent 17 years building and running A Leap Ahead IT, a Sacramento managed service provider serving manufacturing, healthcare, legal, government and nonprofit clients, until it was acquired by Intelligent Technical Solutions in 2023. At ITS he serves as Partner and Chief Risk and Compliance Officer, where he stood up the security operations center, built the compliance practice and helped shape the offensive security program.
He taught the UC Davis Cybersecurity Bootcamp for more than five years, lectures in university cybersecurity programs and speaks on cybersecurity leadership, compliance and the hacker mindset. He is a hacker at heart: he picks locks, carries a Flipper Zero and breaks things to understand how they work. His view is that cybersecurity is not paranoia. It is reasonable hygiene, like locking your door or carrying car insurance.
- Role
- Partner and Chief Risk and Compliance Officer, Intelligent Technical Solutions
- Teaching
- Adjunct instructor, UC Davis Cybersecurity Bootcamp (2019 to 2024); university cybersecurity programs
- Education
- MBA and BS, California State University, Sacramento; MS in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance, Western Governors University
- Frameworks
- CMMC and NIST SP 800-171, SOC 2, HIPAA, FTC Safeguards, ISO 27001, CIS Controls
- Community
- Founder, Bit Fellowship (2009); Point West Rotary
More than 20 certifications, including
- CISSPISC2
- CCSPISC2
- CISMISACA
- C|CISOEC-Council
- CCPCyber AB
- CCACyber AB
- PMPPMI
- SecurityXCompTIA
- CySA+CompTIA
- PenTest+CompTIA
Why a fellowship of bits.
A note from the founder.
I started Bit Fellowship in 2009 because I kept meeting organizations doing the most important work in their communities with the least protection. They were not careless. They were busy, and nobody had made security small enough to fit.
A bit is the smallest piece of anything digital. It is also the smallest unit of progress: one setting, one habit, one person who knows what to do. On its own a bit does not look like much. Put enough of them together, in the right order, and you get a byte, a system, a bridge. That is how every large thing in computing gets built, and it is how a small organization gets safe.
The fellowship is the other half. Nobody closes the digital divide alone. Funders, volunteers, vendors who donate their tools, universities, and the organizations themselves each bring a piece. Our job is to put the pieces in order, teach as we go and leave every organization stronger than we found it. Now that AI is arriving faster than most small teams can follow, that job matters more, not less.
Sean Harris
Bring Sean to your event.
Keynotes, panels, executive briefings and workshops on cybersecurity leadership, compliance and the hacker mindset.