About the Authors

Charles P. Pfleeger is an independent consultant with the Pfleeger Consulting Group, specializing in computer and information system security. Among his responsibilities are threat and vulnerability analysis, risk analysis, system security design and review, certification preparation, training, expert testimony, and general security advice. His customers include government and commercial clients throughout the world.

Dr. Pfleeger was previously a Master Security Architect on the staff of the Chief Security Officer of Cable & Wireless, and Exodus Communications, and before that he was a Senior Computer Scientist and Director of Research for Arca Systems, Director of European Operations for Trusted Information Systems, Inc. (TIS), and a professor in the Computer Science Department of the University of Tennessee.

Dr. Pfleeger was chair of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Security and Privacy from 1997 to 1999 and has been a member of the executive council of that committee since 1995. He is on the board of reviewers for Computers and Security, and was a member of the editorial board of IEEE Security and Privacy and the board of advisors for OWASP, the Open Web Application Security Project.

Dr. Pfleeger has lectured throughout the world and published numerous papers and books. His book Security in Computing (of which the fourth edition—coauthored with Shari Lawrence Pfleeger—was published in 2007) is the standard college textbook in computer security. He is the author of other books and articles on technical computer security and computer science topics.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from The Pennsylvania State University and a B.A. with honors in mathematics from Ohio Wesleyan University. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).

Shari Lawrence Pfleeger is the Research Director for Dartmouth College’s Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection, a consortium of leading universities, national laboratories, and nonprofit institutions dedicated to strengthening the U.S. cyber infrastructure. She joined the I3P after serving for nine years as a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation, where her work focused on software quality and cyber security.

Previously, as president of Systems/Software, Inc., she led a consultancy specializing in software engineering and technology. She has been a developer and maintainer for real-time, business-critical software systems, a principal scientist at MITRE Corporation’s Software Engineering Center, and manager of the measurement program at the Contel Technology Center. She has also held several research and teaching positions at universities in the United States and United Kingdom.

Named repeatedly by the Journal of Systems and Software as one of the world’s top software engineering researchers, Dr. Pfleeger is the author of more than one hundred articles and many books, including Security in Computing, Fourth Edition (with Charles Pfleeger), Software Engineering: Theory and Practice, Fourth Edition (with Joanne Atlee) and Solid Software (with Les Hatton and Charles Howell). She has testified before Congress on cyber security risk, and often appears in the media. She has been associate editor-in-chief of IEEE Software, associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, and is currently an associate editor of IEEE Security & Privacy. Dr. Pfleeger was also the founding chair of ACM’s Committee on the Status of Women and Minorities.

Dr. Pfleeger earned a B.A. in mathematics from Harpur College, an M.A. in mathematics from Penn State, an M.S. in planning from Penn State, a Ph.D. in information technology and engineering from George Mason University, and a Doctor of Humane Letters from Binghamton University.

In their spare time, you can find both Pfleegers on their bicycles or doing volunteer work in the Washington, D.C., area.