Mak is currently Head of Data at MetaMap. Previously, he led data science at Shape Security, where he helped Fortune 500 companies detect and stop malicious traffic – by bad bots, bad humans, and everything in between. As Director of Data Science at F5 (which acquired Shape), he built a real-time machine learning-based system that tackled many digital security and fraud challenges, such as fake account creation, account takeover, and unemployment claims. In his past life, Mak worked at the intersection of cybersecurity, cybercrime and personal data protection at the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore, where he led the creation of Singapore’s cybersecurity legislation and strategy.
Amazing class! I was especially drawn in by the projects. I loved balance of scaffolding to independence—we had an almost endless ability to explore different possibilities, whether it was poking around for vulnerabilities on a practice website or sifting through huge datasets to look for patterns that might signal fraud. This class made me excited about what you can do with data science!
Mak is the real deal. In a space that's flooded with hype and FUD, Mak brings actionable knowledge to the table by focusing his curriculum on the highest impact practical problems in security and risk. The diversity of his professional experience means that you will not only get top-tier technical instruction on the applying data science to fraud problems, but will also get a rare opportunity to combine this with attacker economics and philosophy. This is not a course to miss.
I thought the material was relevant, well structured and presented, and the assignments were thoughtful and thought provoking.
