Neal O’Farrell holds the distinction of being one of the longest-serving security professionals on the planet, forty years and counting.
And he’s always been a people security person. Nearly 25 years ago, in 2000, he was appointed the first ever director of education for a cybersecurity company.
That company was Zone Alarm, makers of one of the first consumer firewalls and later acquired by Checkpoint. His role included teaching the company’s more than 3 million users about the basics of the new world of cyber security.
Neal was one of the first security professionals to champion the increasingly important role of employee awareness in the security mix, when he authored a series of articles in 2000 for TechTarget called the Human Perimeter.
A couple of years later, in 2003, Neal launched Think Security First, one of the nation’s very first security awareness campaigns and a unique experiment to raise the security awareness of an entire city. That was the same year that he built his first security awareness course, a completely customized program for retailer World Market, and they’re still a client today.
He was later invited to join the Federal Trade Commission’s Cybersecurity Roundtable, and serve as the principal security and privacy advisor for President Barack Obama’s Stock Act Panel, an initiative to help prevent insider trading by members of Congress.
He went on to serve as advisor to numerous consumer focused security and privacy companies, including Surf Control, Privacy Matters, Identity Guard, and Credit Sesame.
His first security book “Double Trouble, Protecting Your Identity In An Age Of Cybercrime”, was used by three of the top five U.S. banks, the NFL Players Association, and numerous smaller banks and credit unions. The updated version of the book will be coming out later this year.
As head of the nonprofit Identity Theft Council for a decade, Neal led the fight against Americans biggest consumer crime. He was the first expert to train an entire Police Department in identity theft awareness and has trained hundreds of police departments since then.
In 2011 the Council won SC magazine’s Editor’s Choice award presented at RSA. Previous winners included the SANS Institute and the NSA.
Neal has counselled thousands of victims of identity theft and fraud, helped to change laws to better protect consumers, and was instrumental in introducing the nation’s first child credit freeze law.
He was recently invited to join CNET’s Expert Review Board where he will be focusing on and writing about identity theft, consumer fraud, and the growing influence of AI on both.
