Rob Joyce, the nation’s hacker-in-chief, took up the ironic task of telling a roomful of computer security professionals and academics how to keep people like him and his elite corps out of their systems.

The NSA is typically looking for network admin credentials and not necessarily company VIPs, as network admin’s have high levels of network access and privileges. If you really want to make the NSA’s life hard, he ticked off a list of things to do: limit access privileges for important systems to those who really need them; segment networks and important data to make it harder for hackers to reach your jewels; patch systems and implement application whitelisting; remove hardcoded passwords and legacy protocols that transmit passwords in the clear.

NSA Hacker Chief Explains How to Keep Him out of Your System