About the Author

Darren Death is an information security professional living in the DC Metropolitan Area. During his 17-year technology career, he has supported the private and public sector at the local, state, and national levels. Darren has worked for organizations such as the Department of Justice, Library of Congress, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Darren currently works for Artic Slope Regional Corporation as its chief information security officer. In this role, Darren is responsible for the ASRC Enterprise Information Security program, where he manages the Information Security program across the 3 billion dollar ASRC portfolio crossing many business sectors to include energy, financial services, hospitality, retail, construction, and federal government contracting.

Darren is very active in the information security community and can be heard at many conferences throughout the year speaking on many of the topics covered in this book. Infragard is an organization that is dedicated to sharing information and intelligence working to prevent hostile acts against the United States. In this role, he teaches students the building blocks that go into establishing a successful information security program.

I would like to thank my amazing wife and children for putting up with me and sacrificing the time that it took to write this book.

I would also like to thank the many executives that have walked alongside me throughout my career. These executives include: Leif Henecke, CIO at ASRC Federal; Ann-Marie Massenberg, Chief of Staff at the Office of Financial Management at the US Department of Transportation; Jonathan Alboum, CIO at USDA; Steve Elky, Director of IT Strategic Planning at the Library of Congress; Douglas Ament, CIO at the US Copyright Office; Kyle Holtzman, Deputy Assistant Director of Service Portfolio Management at the U.S. Department of Justice; and Oscar Jordan, Master Sergeant United States Air Force.

Without learning the valuable lessons that I learned from these professionals, I would not be where I am today. It is also because of these inpiduals that I strongly support and participate in mentoring opportunities for others who are staring in their IT careers and work to teach and spread what I have learned to others regarding IT and Information Security best practices.