Peter Warmka is a former Senior Intelligence Officer with the CIA having over 20 years of experience in breaching the security of target organizations overseas in pursuit of foreign intelligence requirements. His area of expertise, known as human hacking or social engineering, focused on the identification, assessment, and manipulation of key insiders to facilitate the breach. Such targets included the inner circles of senior government leaders, research institutions, terrorist groups, organized criminal groups, and entities involved in proliferation. In addition to his own targeting initiatives, Peter served as a senior manager of complex operational platforms where he mentored junior intelligence officers on their operations.
Following his retirement from public service, Peter became obsessed with the growing incidents of data breaches and the fact that over 90 percent of them are initiated through some form of human hacking. Leveraging his area of expertise, he decided to get back into the fight by founding the Orlando-based firm Counterintelligence Institute. Today, his passion and mission are assisting city, state, and federal government entities, non-profits, academic institutions, private companies, and individuals in safeguarding their sensitive proprietary and personal data. At the core of Peter’s approach to cybersecurity risk management is focusing on how to prevent external threat actors from manipulating employees into becoming insider threats.
Peter’s security awareness training programs prioritize proactive measures that organizations can implement to avoid falling victim to data breaches. However, as a licensed investigator specializing in cybercrime, Peter also assists clients who have fallen victim to financial fraud and extorsion.
Peter is a frequent speaker having delivered keynote presentations to a variety of audiences as well as two TEDx talks. In addition to co-hosting The Security Guy and the CIA Spy, Peter has been a guest on numerous podcasts including RANE Insights, Cyberwire Human Hacking, Paul’s Security Weekly, Truth Lies and Coverups, and The Action Catalyst.
He has contributed to, and authored, numerous publications in English and Spanish on social engineering and the manipulation of insiders. His best-selling non-fiction book, Confessions of a CIA Spy – The Art of Human Hacking, was featured on Fox32. It is sought after by individuals, as well as by corporations providing it as a training resource for their personnel.
Peter previously served as an Adjunct Professor at Webster University’s Masters in Cybersecurity Program. He expanded the course curriculum to include the growing threat of human hacking and established a social engineering “capture the flag” practical exercise. He assigned each student a U.S. corporate entity as their target. The purpose of the exercise was to collect as many flags as possible and develop a proposal for breaching the target entity’s security. Students then provided a class briefing sharing their methodology, findings and lessons learned. Many students cited this course as among the best they have taken at the graduate level.
Peter also has over 10 years of experience as a curriculum designer and specialized tradecraft instructor for various special forces units of the Department of Defense. He finds mentoring those who risk their lives in service to their country as an honor and privilege.
Peter received a bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a master’s degree in International Business Management from Thunderbird School of Global Management. Mr. Warmka is a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), a Certified Protection Professional (CPP) and Certified Instructor at CIA University (CIAU).
He and his wife live in Orlando. They have three children and five grandchildren. Peter loves archeology, exploration, and adventure. He has traveled to over 56 countries and speaks four languages.
