Summary#
Hello, I’m Damien Riquet, a Research Engineer with a passion for exploring innovative solutions in Cybersecurity. Welcome to my website, where I’m thrilled to share my journey, projects, and discoveries in the world of research and technology.
Since an early age, I’ve been captivated by the wonders of science and technology, driving me to pursue a career in research to actively contribute to advancements that shape our world. My journey began at the University of Lille, France, where I completed a PhD on Network Security, Language and Distribution. After that, I joined Stormshield, a network security provider, as kernel developer. Later on, I became part of Vade, an email security provider, first as Research Engineer, now as Lead Research Engineer.
My current research interests revolve around Cybersecurity, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing, combining insights from various fields to create meaningful and impactful outcomes.
As Lead Research Engineer at Vade, I take pride in leading innovative projects that benefit both our customers and the academic community. This includes prototyping new approaches using cutting-edge technologies like Computer Vision, Machine Learning, and NLP. Additionally, I enjoy providing insightful propositions to our customers and actively publishing our work in academic conferences.
I’m always excited to connect with fellow researchers, enthusiasts, and anyone interested in the marvels of research. If you have any questions, collaboration proposals, or just want to say hello, feel free to reach out.
About me#
Proud father of two, I live near Lille, France. I like spending time with my family, playing disc golf and video games, or finding geocaches. I also like to make jokes and puns.
I love computer science and cybersecurity. While my go-to languages are Golang and C, I’m learning Rust at the moment. I am a quick learner and always up for a good challenge.
Outside of work, I’m actively involved in various pursuits. Since 2015, I have served as a geocaching reviewer, and I currently sit on the board of my children’s kindergarten association.
Curiosity best describes me: I have a voracious appetite for knowledge, often immersing myself in articles, GitHub repositories, and educational videos to understand diverse subjects.
Main skills#
Software development
- Implementation of backend systems that are both user-friendly and efficient, based on microservices architecture, capable of scaling to handle large volumes of requests.
- Designing robust and critical applications through comprehensive testing methodologies including unit testing, regression testing, and fuzzing.
- Leveraging experience in Golang and C to provide expertise in both languages.
- Advanced debugging skills to address bugs and identify optimization opportunities for improving application performance. Knowledge of underlying layers of systems, compilers and languages.
- Good knowledge of day-to-day tooling, including Git, Gitlab CI, Docker, and (a little of) Kubernetes.
Technical leadership
- Leading technical projects, including complex systems, while keeping them as simple as possible.
- Mentoring developers, reviewing code, establishing good engineering practices.
- Delivering technical presentations both internally and externally.
- Participating in the recruitment: review and interview of candidates.
Research and innovation
- Supervising PhD students and collaborating with public research laboratories.
- Conducting state-of-the-art academic research, in order to implement innovative solutions in industrial settings.
- Publishing computer science contributions in workshops and conferences.
Experience#
Lead Research Engineer
2022 - Present
Vade (acquired by Hornetsecurity in 2024)
In addition to my previous responsibilities (see below), I was given the opportunity to act as Lead Research Engineer.
- Leading an NLP-oriented project aimed at detecting unsolicited textual emails, such as spear-phishing or cold emails.
- Supervising PhD students and collaborating with public Research laboratories:
- Gabriel Loiseau: Privacy and Utility-Preserving Transfer Learning for Text Anonymization.
- Senaid Popovic: Intent detection in textual content.
Research Engineer
2017 - 2022
Vade
Vade, a French cybersecurity firm specializing in email security solutions, where I served as a Research Engineer within the Innovation team. Key responsibilities included:
- Developing advanced technologies in C and Golang, leveraging Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and Natural Language Processing:
- Creation of PDF and Office document parsers, to extract meaningful features for Vade's malware classifier.
- Design of Computer Vision-based threat detection systems such as RIANA, successfully blocking up to 30 million emails monthly based on appearance or embedded remote images.
- Implementation of NLP-based detection mechanisms to identify textual threats such as spear-phishing.
- Providing technical mentorship, conducting code reviews, and establishing robust engineering practices.
- Delivering internal and external technical presentations.
- Participating in the recruitment efforts by conducting candidate reviews and interviews, overseeing internships.
Software developer
2015 - 2017
Stormshield
Stormshield, a leading French cybersecurity firm, is specialized in network, workstation, and data protection solutions.
- Enhanced existing network analysis modules within custom intrusion prevention kernel module.
- Led integration of Gzip into HTTP module, conducting stress tests and benchmarks.
- Led the development of the High Availability prototype at kernel level.
PhD Student
2011 - 2015
2XS Team, CRIStAL, University of Lille
Network security study focused on Cloud Computing, using a passive approach.
- Proposition of a distributed architecture of intrusion detection systems and a dedicated language to describe a set of security rules.
- Functional solution implemented in Python and C (~20.000 lines of code) including an intrusion detection system, a compiler and several modules.
- Position poster presented at Eurosys 2012, Bern, Switzerland.
- Publication of three peer-reviewed articles.
- PhD Thesis: Discus : Une architecture de détection d’intrusions réseau distribuée basée sur un langage dédié
Teaching assistant
2011 - 2015
University of Lille
- 370 teaching hours (BSc in Computer Science).
- Two main themes: System programming (memory allocation, process management, signals, debugging) and Networking (OSI layer, TCP/UDP protocols, routing and network equipment configuration).
- Supervision of internships and student projects.
Research Internship
2011 (6 months)
2XS Team, LIFL, University of Lille
Study of the impact of distributed attacks on the Cloud Computing:
- State of the art on network distributed attacks.
- Large-scale experiments based on port scanning, with various numbers of machines and network security solutions.
Internship
2010 (4 months)
POPS Team, LIFL, University of Lille
Improvement of STAN, a static analysis tool able to enforce control flow policies for Java bytecode, tailored for use in open and constrained devices like credit cards.
Education#
I earned my MSc in Computer Science from the University of Lille in 2011, followed by the completion of a PhD in Computer Science in 2015, with a focus on cybersecurity.
