Claudiu Popa keynote speaker

As one of Canada’s leading cybersecurity and online privacy experts, Claudiu Popa is an exemplary interview subject, an entertaining cyber safety educator, and a dynamic lecturer who brings an informative attitude, true passion, and abundant character to every event. He is also an entrepreneurial storyteller, an insatiable informavore, a committed cypherpunk, and a wannabe galactic hitchhiker.

Claudiu graduated from York University in Toronto, Canada, where he became the co-founder of the KnowledgeFlow Foundation, a Canadian nonprofit organization focused on cybersafety in the education sector, edtech innovation, and the protection of personal information. Claudiu was previously the Managing Director of the Canadian Cybercrime Information Centre at Seneca College where he led efforts to collect and analyze financial cybercrime information for public awareness.

Claudiu has a passion for helping and educating others, especially those in vulnerable sectors. His work at KnowledgeFlow focuses on children, students, seniors, and other individuals who do not currently have a voice in Canada because of antiquated legislation and government bodies without enforcement authority.

An avid collector of important books and unique artifacts, Claudiu enjoys writing the Bad Privacy blog and occasionally recording CyberSecurED podcasts. While he strives to be an exciting and informative public speaker, he truly loves to infect his four curious children (in both senses of the word) with a certain zeal for learning and sharing.

As a professional and captivating speaker, Claudiu draws upon a vast number of interests and skills. From fitness training and collecting books to his experience working with diverse audiences across four continents, he seamlessly integrates his role as an adjunct professor and lecturer at higher education institutions. Claudiu not only shares his wealth of knowledge but also has a knack for making subjects, such as enterprise privacy and fintech cybersecurity, accessible and intriguing.

His engaging presentations reflect the depth of his expertise, stemming from decades of teaching and research in areas ranging from information security to cyberfraud. With insights gained from both academia and real-world applications, Claudiu’s talks not only inspire but also empower audiences to navigate the digital landscape with a heightened understanding of privacy and cybersecurity.

Speaking of research, Claudiu leads teams of graduate students from academic institutions on discovery expeditions into the so-called Dark Web, motivating participants to innovate and create new applications for fascinating technologies. Despite being a Computer Science major minted in the last millennium, Claudiu has always been a technologist whose diverse interests span a diversity of subject matter, from the ethical use of monitoring controls in, say, automotive systems, to the creation of risk management systems in financial models.