About Us

The Company:

Clear Hat Consulting was founded by Sherri Sparks and Shawn Embleton in early 2007. We are a small business involved in many different aspects of computer security. Specific areas of focus include low level vulnerability assessment and penetration testing, supply chain risk management, and the development of virtualization assisted technologies to detect and respond to sophisticated, low level malware threats. Clear Hat also provides consulting and training to government and industry customers.

Based in the heart of downtown Orlando, at the corner of Pine Street and Court Avenue, we try to maintain a comfortable but challenging environment for our employees. The majority of Clear Hat's core research and development engineers, including the founders, are Computer Science graduates of the University Of Central Florida. Our company started with just two people and has grown to six as we transitioned from that first small contract to taking on bigger tasks over the years. We anticipate continued growth in the coming year as we seek to round out our staff. Content to grow slowly, we feel that by staying smaller we can provide a level of service that cannot be matched by the larger corporations.

The Founders:

Sherri Sparks is the President of Clear Hat Consulting, Inc. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, a Graduate Certificate in Computer Forensics, and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Central Florida. She also completed all of the Computer Science PhD coursework with the exception of her dissertation. In 2010, she made the decision to take a break from school to focus upon developing Clear Hat Consulting.

Ms. Sparks has been actively involved in the software security space for the past 7 years. Her published articles have appeared in a variety of industry and academic publications including USENIX, ACSAC, Security Focus, SecureComm, and Phrack. Her research interests include offensive / defensive stealth code technologies, digital forensics, and reverse engineering. She has repeatedly spoken at the Black Hat security conference on these topics, conducted international trainings, and taught the Black Hat Offensive Aspects of Rootkit Technology. Ms. Sparks has also been actively involved with digital forensics as a civilian volunteer for the computer crimes division of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. She was awarded the Sheriff’s Citation in 2005 for her work. In early 2007, Ms Sparks co-founded the Florida Company, Clear Hat Consulting, Inc. with Shawn Embleton to offer specialized development and training services on a variety of security related software technologies.

Shawn Embleton is the Vice President of Clear Hat Consulting, Inc. He holds both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Central Florida. Like co-founder Sherri Sparks, he nearly completed his PhD before making the decision to focus on the company. Mr. Embleton spoke at Black Hat in 2006 on the topic of using evolutionary computation for automated vulnerability analysis and co-authored a prototype intelligent fuzz testing tool, named Sidewinder. During 2007, He co-taught the Black Hat Offensive Aspects of Rootkit Technology class and co-founded the Clear Hat Consulting, Inc. He also released the first open source, proof-of-concept hardware virtualization rootkit based upon Intel VT technology. Much of his current research and development focuses upon a combination of firmware vulnerability assessment and hardware virtualization technologies.