SecurityPanel

Neal O'Farrell is a nationally recognized expert on cybercrime and identity theft. Heís also an entrepreneur and small business owner who got his first taste of running a business from a family business that began in the early 1900ís.

Once described as one of the world's Top 20 security experts, Neal was the driving force behind a number of national security awareness initiatives, including the nationís first Cyber Secure City, a unique experiment to raise the security awareness on an entire city.

This year-long program to encourage all citizens to ìThink Security First!î was a collaboration between local government, law enforcement, schools and the business community of Walnut Creek California, the birthplace of PeopleSoft and CommerceOne, to provide free education on cybercrime, identity theft, and online safety to all citizens.

The initiative received the endorsements of numerous organizations including the Department of Homeland Security, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC2), and supported by Microsoft, Cisco, and McAfee.

Neal also created the nationís first Cyber Security Day, in November 2002 ñ a major one day conference that provided free security training to more than 1,200 small businesses, and as a result of his work the city of Walnut Creek California declared April of every year to be the city's Think Security First! month.

Neal has been developing security solutions since the early 1980's, including the first voice-based biometric access control system for the banking industry, and was recently credited with creating the Identity Theft Score, the first personal identity theft risk analysis system to help consumers measure and manage their vulnerability to identity theft.

He also the first security expert to train an entire police department in identity theft awareness, and that program has since been used by more than 200 police departments and police academies, as well as the FBI, the DMV, and US Attorney's Office.

As a security educator Neal has taught security, often pro bono, to diverse audiences ranging from small businesses, Chambers of Commerce, police departments, and parent teacher groups, to security professionals and IT auditors.

An experienced security writer and editor, Neal recently authored "Building A Hack Proof Business - The Small Business Guide to Surviving Cybercrime and Identity Theft," due for publication in the Fall of '07.

He was also a Technical Editor for the "Hack Proofing" series of security guides from Syngress Publishing and a contributing writer and panel expert for SearchSecurity.com, the leading education forum for the information security industry.

As Editor for The Zone, the monthly security newsletter published by ZoneAlarm maker Zone Labs in San Francisco, Neal was responsible for teaching security to more than 3 million computer users in 120 countries.

Over his twenty-five-year security career Neal has worked as a security consultant and advisor to financial organizations, government, military, intelligence, and Fortune 500 firms around the world, and has taught security awareness to employees from a wide variety of organizations including Toyota, ChevronTexaco, Merrill Lynch, and bebe stores.

Neal is also a founder and member of the Advisory Board of The Center For Information Security, a non-profit Community College-based security training facility in the San Francisco East Bay.

As a security educator Neal ran his first security conference in 1989, co-hosting with IBM one of Europe's first network security conferences. Since then he has been invited to speak at numerous industry conferences, including the Information Integrity World Summit, the Network Infrastructure Conference, the Financial Network Security Conference, and the 2001 Computer Security Institute Annual Conference.

Neal was also invited to Chair the first Cybercrime on Wall Street Conference, in New York in January 2002.

As a small business owner, Neal began his first security business when he graduated from the Dublin Institute of Technology's College of Marketing in 1982. By the time he was twenty-five he was regarded as one of the world's youngest computer security experts, helping Ireland's Top 5 banks to protect their networks from the first generation of hackers.

His achievements were recognized when he was awarded the contract to secure the first Irish Banks National Joint ATM Network and he was also retained to develop a security system for Ireland's fledgling cellular network.

And he was honored for his work as a security entrepreneur by being selected twice as the entrepreneur to represent Ireland in the Export to Japan Study Program in Tokyo, in 1990.

Through the years Neal was involved in a variety of security initiatives, developing advanced encryption systems for government and military customers around the world. In 1988 he launched Intrepid, a government-backed project to develop a European rival for the U.S. Government STU3 secure telephone project.

Neal has been at the forefront of technical innovation in the war against hackers and first started working on the challenge of identity theft in the late 1980's, developing technologies to help banks authenticate the identity of customers accessing their bank accounts and information.

In 1988 he installed the first two-factor authentication system on Irish banking networks ñ a technology which is now in the forefront of the battle against identity theft and especially phishing. And in 1993 he developed a biometrics-based access control system for Britainís largest banks. The voice verification system was designed to help confirm the identity of consumers using the bankís new ìbanking by telephoneî system.

Neal is credited with developing the world's first encrypting fax machine (CipherFax) and later developed EtherPhone, the first product to deliver real-time, toll-quality encrypted speech over Ethernet networks.

Neal is the author of three small business guides, including Stepping Into Magic - A Handbook for the High Tech Entrepreneur; and was founder and Managing Editor of Bottom Up, the first online magazine for the high tech start up.

His urge to build his own business came from his familyís business in Ireland, a well-known weaving company started in 1919 whose customers included famous designers like Coco Chanel, Guy Laroche, Yves St Laurent, and Balmain, as well as the Duchess of Westminster, Nancy Reagan, and the Queen of Siam.

Neal has authored more than 100 articles on security and has appeared in a broad spectrum of publications, including BusinessWeek, Information Week, Smart Business, CNN/Money, the San Francisco Chronicle, Internet.com, Law.com, the National Law Journal, Networker, and Wireless Systems Design, as well as TechTV and KPIX-TV Channel 5 (CBS affiliate San Francisco).

Click here to learn more about Neal.