About the Author

Linda Ann McCarthy is a recognized authority in security technology, as well as an author and an industry speaker. McCarthy is the Executive Security Advisory, Office of the CTO for Symantec Corporation. McCarthy was most recently the Vice President of Systems Engineering for Recourse Technologies, a company that developed software to detect, trap, and track hackers.

Before that McCarthy was Senior Vice President for NETSEC, a company that provides managed intrusion detection and response services. She had previously been the manager of security research and development for Sun Microsystems and had founded Network Defense Fund.

At their request, McCarthy has broken into systems on corporate networks just to show executive managers how easy it is to gain access to corporate secrets, shut down manufacturing systems, and even crash worldwide computer operations. Instead, She uses her knowledge to educate executive managers how to avoid those types of disasters.

Linda has taught several courses at Sun Microsystems, including classes in hardware architecture, system administration, and UNIX security.