Enterprise-Grade Cybersecurity, Made Personal

Countervail is a veteran-owned cybersecurity and licensed investigative agency providing fractional CISO services, cybercrime investigations, incident readiness, and adversary-informed training shaped by Fortune 100 security leadership, red-team expertise, enterprise incident response, secure cloud assurance, and the operational discipline of military aviation.

Software solutions address important cybersecurity problems, but motivated threat actors often bypass well-designed security controls by exploiting predictable cognitive biases, including trust, authority, urgency, routine, and pressure. Countervail prepares organizations before digital harm occurs and provides licensed investigative support when cybercrime, fraud, account compromise, or digital exploitation has already occurred.

Why Countervail Exists

Technical controls are only as strong as the decisions made by the people trusted to operate them. Motivated threat actors exploit this dependency by manipulating trust, authority, urgency, routine, and pressure before defenders recognize the attack is underway. They study public exposure, communication habits, decision authority, operational workflows, and the human conditions that create leverage.

Countervail provides fractional CISO services, incident readiness reviews, response-plan stress testing, adversary-informed training, and licensed cybercrime investigations for organizations and individuals facing serious digital risk. The agency works on matters involving fraud, account compromise, impersonation, stalking, harassment, doxing, ransomware, extortion, business email compromise, and other forms of cyber-enabled harm.

Countervail combines adversary-informed cybersecurity, OSINT, incident response planning, tabletop exercises, behavioral science, and investigative discipline so clients can identify risk, preserve what matters, and take the next right action.

About Joanna Wiggum

Joanna Wiggum is the founder and agency principal of Countervail. She brings more than two decades of experience across enterprise cybersecurity and military leadership, Big Tech incident response, red-team operations, and licensed cybercrime investigation.

Joanna served nearly twelve years in the U.S. Air Force across air, space, and cyberspace mission environments, including service as a B-52 Weapons Systems Officer and dual-qualified navigator. She began her career as an Interface Control Technician supporting operations during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, later earning a command-nominated scholarship to commission as an officer.

Her cybersecurity career includes building and delivering Starbucks’ red team, serving as Director of Cybersecurity over Application Security and Vulnerability Management, leading Oracle Cloud red-team work, building Oracle Cloud’s Trust and Safety program, and leading Microsoft security incident response across Azure Cloud and AI environments.

Joanna holds a B.A. in International Security Studies, an M.A. in Human Relations, and SANS training in incident handling and OSINT. Her work sits at the intersection of adversary behavior, organizational pressure, human decision-making, and the evidence required when cyber harm becomes a legal, financial, insurance, or law-enforcement matter.

Speaking and Workshops

Joanna is an active cybersecurity speaker and workshop leader focused on how adversaries exploit trust, authority, urgency, exposure, and decision pressure. She is leading a workshop at DEF CON 34, speaking at NAIFA Washington in September, and has previously been featured by ISSA Puget Sound.

Countervail workshops are built around how attacks actually unfold. Participants examine how adversaries build believable pretexts, exploit routine workflows, manipulate authority, and create pressure that drives preventable decisions.

Each session is grounded in red-team methodology, OSINT, enterprise incident response, behavioral science, and practical decision-making. The training is designed for organizations that need more than awareness content, phishing scores, or compliance-driven instruction.

Agency Information

Countervail LLC is a veteran-owned, Washington State licensed, bonded, and insured private investigation agency.

Agency Principal: Joanna Wiggum
PI License #26010541
UBI 606107463