Paula Januszkiewicz, Founder and CEO of CQURE and CQURE Academy, has been named Best Speaker at TechMentor Redmond 2025.
Her session earned a perfect 5.0 score and generated twice the number of feedback forms compared with the average talk.
Organizers singled it out as the event favourite, and attendees responded with high praise for the practical, forensic work she presented.
Januszkiewicz’s talk focused on DPAPI and DPAPI-NG decryption and on forensic evidence extraction techniques that defenders can apply immediately.
She demonstrated how secrets and PFX passwords can be recovered and explained how those techniques fit into real incident response workflows.
The session balanced live demonstrations with forensic rigor and defensive guidance, the kind of material that resonates with security practitioners who must turn research into action during real incidents.
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CQURE celebrated the win, pointing out that when their team brings battle-tested skills on topics ranging from credential theft to live forensics, audiences recognise real expertise.
The company noted the perfect score and unusually high feedback volume as proof that deep, practitioner-led content still matters at major events.
Organizers called the session the clear favourite, and attendees made it one of the most discussed talks of the conference.
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Well Deserved!
Paula herself thanked the community and the event. She wrote that she was honoured to receive the award and grateful to everyone who showed up and engaged.
She singled out TechMentor and Microsoft for providing the platform and thanked Sami Laiho and Dave Kawula for being outstanding organizers.
“Thank you to everyone who showed up, engaged, and made this possible. Sharing real frontline insights on real-world DPAPI cracking and forensic techniques clearly hit home,” she added.
Her closing message stayed focused and practical. Let’s keep building better defenders, she wrote, a concise mission that reflects both the talk and CQURE’s broader work.
The recognition is no accident. Paula brings nearly two decades of hands-on cybersecurity experience to the stage.
She founded CQURE and CQURE Academy in 2008 and has built the companies around practical training, targeted consulting, and real-world testing.
She is an Enterprise Security MVP and an honorary Microsoft Regional Director, and in 2017, she graduated from Harvard Business School.
Her speaking record is consistently strong. Paula has been a top-rated speaker at major conferences, including Microsoft Ignite and Black Hat Asia, and two of her sessions at RSA ranked among the conference’s best.
Those credentials help explain why her talks regularly draw high engagement and why practitioners travel to hear her.
CQURE’s approach is straightforward and practical. The firm specialises in consulting for complex infrastructures, advanced penetration tests and Red Team operations, incident response and forensics, and deep technical training through CQURE Academy.
Their work is delivered by practitioners who combine high-level certifications with field experience.
The company also produces tools and labs through the CQURE Cyber Lab that support penetration testing and incident response, and shares many of those resources with the community.
That emphasis on useful tools and repeatable techniques is precisely what many conference attendees seek.
Why this talk matters beyond the applause and the award. DPAPI and DPAPI-NG are core Windows technologies used to protect credentials and secrets.
When those protections are understood and, when appropriate, reliably tested, defenders gain clearer visibility into how attackers operate and how compromises progress.
Practical forensic techniques let teams find evidence faster, assess scope more confidently, and make better decisions about containment and recovery.
In short, sessions that close the gap between research and operational response speed up learning and reduce risk for organizations that face real threats every day.
Paula and her team also bring reach and momentum to their work. She travels extensively to deliver training and consultancy, and CQURE’s Academy provides deep dive courses and tailored programs for security teams and management.
The company’s mix of consulting, offensive testing, and education means that lessons learned in one area flow into the others.
Research done for a penetration test informs a training module. Forensic techniques proven in incident response become classroom material.
That cycle produces practitioners who leave sessions with steps they can apply the next week, not just concepts.
The win at TechMentor Redmond reinforces a simple point. In an era when the attack surface grows daily, and secrets remain prime targets, defenders need clear, tested, practical methods more than ever.
Recognition like this matters because it is based on tangible feedback from an active technical audience.
A perfect score combined with double the usual feedback volume is a signal that the material landed and that attendees felt it would change their work for the better.
Congratulations to Paula Januszkiewicz and the CQURE team for a well-deserved award.
As Paula put it, the goal is to keep building better defenders, and this session was a direct example of how focused research, clear demonstrations, and practical takeaways can do exactly that.
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