Larstan's The Black Book On: Government Security

Government Security > About the Authors

Howard Schmidt - President & CEO, R & H Security Consulting LLC and Former White House Cyber Security Advisor

Howard A. Schmidt has had a long distinguished career in defense, law enforcement and corporate security spanning almost 40 years. He has served as Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer and Chief Security Strategist for online auction giant eBay. In The fall of 2004 he assumed the position of Chief Security Strategist for the US CERT Partners Program for the National Cyber Security Division. Previous roles include Vice Chair of the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board and as the Special Adviser for Cyberspace Security for the White House, chief security officer for Microsoft Corp., supervisory special agent and director of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) Computer Forensic Lab and Computer Crime and Information Warfare Division, head of the Computer Exploitation Team FBI National Drug Intelligence Center, city police officer, Chandler Police Department in Arizona.

Among many other accomplishments, Howard holds board positions on a number of corporate boards in both an advisory and director positions and recently has assumed the role as Chairman of the Board for Electronics Lifestyle Integration (ELI).

William Pelgrin - Director NYS Office of Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure

As Director of the New York State Office of Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure Coordination (CSCIC), William Pelgrin is responsible for leading and coordinating New York State's efforts regarding cyber readiness and resilience. Mr. Pelgrin also chairs the New York State Public/Private Sector Cyber Security Workgroup, comprising a talented cadre of representatives from State and local government, academia, the private sector, as well as the federal government. In addition, he is Chair of the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) which currently includes participation from 49 states and the District of Columbia to share important cyber security information. William Pelgrin has more than twenty years of experience in New York State government, holding a variety of executive leadership positions in a number of agencies.

Gregory N. Akers, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Cisco Systems

Gregory N. Akers is Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Global Government Solutions Group with Cisco Systems. This group includes dedicated teams that address global defense and space, critical infrastructure protection, U.S. homeland security challenges and adaptation of Cisco products and services to the unique requirements of government customers. Mr. Akers plays a crucial role as an interface between the U.S. federal government and Cisco customers in Internet security and critical infrastructure protection.

Mr. Akers served as president of the IT-Information Sharing and Analysis Center in 2002 and vice president in 2001. He is also on the National White-Collar Crime Board and the Local Board of Infraguard. Mr. Akers holds a bachelor's of science degree in chemical engineering from the University of Akron. He is CCIE® certified.

Doron Cohen - CTO, Identity Management Business Unit, BMC Software

Doron Cohen holds a Bachelor of Science in Math and Computer Science from Bar Ilan University in Israel. After spending several years in the Israeli Defense Forces as a system administrator and IT security officer, Doron joined New Dimension Software (later acquired by BMC Software) and has played a leading role in the inception, design and development of the CONTROL-SA product line ever since. Doron has over 20 years of experience in IT and Security Management including over 13 years directing development of enterprise-class system and security applications. He has extensive expertise in the development of Identity Management products for distributed cross-platform environments - spanning operating systems, databases and applications.

Robert J. Worner - Director Solution Line Management, Identity Management Business Unit, BMC Software, Inc.

Mr. Worner has more than 20 years of experience in software architecture, design and development, he is responsible for long term market analysis and business development of BMC Software's Identity Management Business Unit solutions. Worner joined BMC Software in 2005 with the acquisition of OpenNetwork Technologies. As co-founder of OpenNetwork Technologies in 1996, Worner held various positions in the company from VP of Product Management, SVP or Product Engineering and most recently, president and CEO. Prior to founding OpenNetwork, Worner served as an enterprise network management software developer for MCI and GTE holding several managerial and technical positions. Previously, Worner served as a software build coordinator for Lockheed Space Operations in support of space shuttle missions. He holds a Bachelor's of science degree in engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville.

Mary Ann Davidson - CSO, Oracle

Davidson has been at Oracle for more than 15 years. As Oracle's CSO, Davidson is responsible for Oracle product security, as well as security evaluations, assessments and incident handling. Davidson also represents Oracle on the Board of Directors of the Information Technology Information Security Analysis Center (IT-ISAC) and is on the editorial review board of the Secure Business Quarterly. Prior to joining Oracle in 1988, Davidson served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy Civil Engineer Corps, during which she was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal. As a recognized authority on Internet and software security issues, Davidson has testified before Congress on information security, and has spoken at numerous industry forums. Davidson advocates the adoption of security evaluation standards by the software industry similar to the U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS-140, requiring security evaluations of all U.S. government IT systems involved in national security, or the International Common Criteria (ISO-15408), the de facto worldwide evaluation standard.

Alastair MacWillson - Global Managing Partner, Accenture Security Services

Dr. Alastair MacWillson is the Partner in charge of Accenture's global Security Services and works with business and government leaders around the world on critical issues such as security, trust, privacy and compliance. He also serves on the leadership team of Accenture's global Technology & Outsourcing Service Line. Prior to joining Accenture, Alastair spent 16 years with the UK Foreign Service specialising in political and technical risk analysis on postings in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and the USA. In 1990 he joined PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and in 1992, took on the role of global lead for the Technology Risk and e-Business Services a group of 2,500 security professionals. He also served as the interim global CEO for beTRUSTed, PriceWaterhouseCooper's managed identity services spin-off.

Alastair holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics, related to research in Applied Cryptography. He is based in London.

Eric Stange - Managing Partner, Defense, Accenture

Eric Stange has 25 years experience in information technology and management consulting. For over the past 14 years he has focused on serving the U.S. Department of Defense in a variety of business areas, with a specific emphasis in the logistics and supply chain area. More recently Eric has taken on leadership of Accenture's Defense and Homeland Security portfolio which includes DoD and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Paul B. Patrick - VP & Chief Architect, AquaLogic, BEA Systems, Inc.

Mr. Patrick has been with BEA for more than eight years. Mr. Patrick is responsible for the overall architectural direction of those products. Prior to this position, Mr. Patrick served as the Chief Security Architect for BEA where his responsibilities included driving the security strategy and leading the design of BEA's enterprise security infrastructure product offering. Prior to becoming BEA's Chief Security Architect, Mr. Patrick served as security architect for WebLogic Server, co-architect for BEA's WebLogic Enterprise Object Transaction Monitor, and the lead architect of BEA's ObjectBroker CORBA ORB. He has over 20 years experience in the high technology industry with roles in software and hardware development, including network device firmware and diagnostics, network protocols, distributed computing technology, tool development, quality assurance, and technical support. Prior to coming to BEA, Mr. Patrick worked at Digital Equipment Corporation for 13 years where his responsibilities included serving as technical leader for the development of distributed object technology including Digital's ObjectBrokerT CORBA product and technology to bridge the COM/OLE and CORBA object models.

Mr. Patrick is also the author of several patent applications in the areas of security and service-based architectures as well as been published in a number of industry publications, and written a book on CORBA.

Jim Porell - IBM Distinguished Engineer, Chief Architect, zSeries Software, IBM Corporation

Jim Porell is Distinguished Engineer, a Senior Technical Staff Member and Chief Architect for IBM's mainframe software. He chairs the zSeries Software Design council which brings together all of IBM technology utilized in the deployment of customer solutions utilizing mainframe technology. Jim led the architecture for IBM's Multi-Level Security technology for z/OS, including the database server, DB2. These became generally available in March, 2004, though the base technology dates back to 1987. Jim focuses on Security and Business Resilient solutions for customers. He has been consulting to government and commercial customers on secure computing infrastructure for ten years. He has participated in several government efforts ensuring the protection of critical computing infrastructure.

Donald A. Purdy Jr. - Director, Cyber Security - Department of Homeland Security

Andy Purdy is the deputy director of the National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Purdy was involved in setting up NCSD in 2003. Prior to beginning his work in support of DHS, Purdy served as deputy to the vice chair and senior advisor for IT Security and Privacy to the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board (PCIPB). At the PCIPB, Purdy worked in the areas of cyber crime, privacy protection, government procurement, maintenance of more secure products and systems, and promotion of information sharing in the health care, manufacturing, and air transportation industrial sectors.

Purdy also served as Chief Deputy General Counsel for the US Sentencing Commission since 1989, and as Acting General Counsel from November 1999 to January 2001. In addition, he chaired the Economic Crime Policy Team that promulgated the November 2001 economic crime package of amendments. He also contributed to the promulgation of amendments dealing with identity theft, access device offenses, and counterfeiting.

Rao Vasireddy - Member of Technical Staff, Lucent Technologies

S. Rao Vasireddy has over 19 years of experience in the research and development of data / voice communications services, network security and quality assessment in Bell Laboratories. His research interests include application security, BL X.805 domain analysis, threat evaluation, security solutions for Service Providers, and quality metrics. Prior to joining Lucent, he worked at Telecordia Technologies and AT&T Bell Laboratories as a Systems Engineer in data networking, voice service planning and performance evaluation groups. He has been an active contributor to the development of voice and data communications services during his career at Lucent Technologies and AT&T. Rao's contributions include design and development of IP service architectures for global network providers, security frameworks, security architecture assessment of 3G and IMS networks. His security contributions have been included in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cyber Security Taskforce and he continues to participate in the government taskforces on security. Rao was an assistant professor in data Processing and Management department at University of Louisville, KY for a year prior to joining AT&T and Lucent.