About the Author

Brian Koerner (CISSP, MCSE) is a former police officer who combined his law enforcement experience and technical skills for a career in information security. Brian is a Chief Security Engineer for a computer services firm, providing security expertise to some of the largest organizations in the world. He has conducted security assessments for compliance with security standards, regulatory mandates (such as HIPAA) and contractual obligations (such as the PCI Data Security Standard). He is adept in many Microsoft technologies as well as encryption and enterprise‐security architecture. He has been trained in criminal procedure law, investigations, computer forensics, incident response, and more. Brian is an avid security researcher who is passionate about matters of security and privacy. He is an accomplished writer and speaker whose expertise related to information security, data breaches, and identity theft has been sought out by business and media organizations around the globe. He writes for About.com (http://idtheft.about.com), where he provides advice and tips to those concerned about or victims of identity theft and other crimes of fraud. Through this work, he has touched the lives and assisted thousands of individuals affected by these crimes. Brian has developed personal security‐awareness seminars and identity theft workshops to help organizations educate their employees on how to protect their Personally Identifiable Information (PII) as well as proprietary business information. He's helped these organizations understand that they, too, must take seriously their role in protecting PII of their employees, customers, and partners.

Brian resides in upstate New York with his wife Cosimina and three children: Justin, Ashley, and Brianna. You can e‐mail Brian at idtheft.guide@about.com.

About the Co‐Authors

As you might imagine, a book of this nature takes a significant amount of time to write. I was lucky enough to have two people that had the time, energy, and expertise to help when I came knocking.

Mike Borkin (GSEC, MCSE in NT and 2000), as both an end user and a security professional, has seen all the considerable changes in the Microsoft security philosophy in all the intervening operating systems from Windows 3.1 to Vista.

Currently, Mike's role in a Fortune 100 computer services firm makes him accountable for ensuring the security of Windows‐based desktops and servers around the world. Since September 2005, Mike has worked with the Microsoft Technology Adoption Program to provide direction to Microsoft regarding Vista security and its features.

Of particular benefit to the reader is Mike's expertise in managing access in Windows operating systems and his related contributions to chapters on managing accounts, groups, and shares; advanced techniques for managing access; restricting the use of removable media; security policies and digital rights management.

Mike lives in the Detroit metro area with his wife Melissa. Mike would like to thank his family for generally putting up with him — except for Melissa, who doesn't have a choice. (||)

Joe Howard (CISSP, CSSP) is a lead information‐security architect who develops and implements corporate security policies and standards for Fortune 100 companies. As a leader in security strategy and direction, Joe has been exposed to many of the technologies and standards, including PCI, HIPAA, EAL, and Sarbanes‐Oxley.

Joe is a proficient speaker and presenter for both government and corporate clients. He has authored white papers on security tactics and participated in RFC reviews. Formerly, he was a member of a government and corporate incident response team, security auditor, penetration tester, and white hat hacker. Joe has trained various government agencies in security awareness and developed several corporate security policies for large companies.

Joe contributed to the chapter on implementing IE 7 security features and the chapter on thwarting security risks.

Joe resides in Nashville, Tennessee, with his two children, Jacob and Lily, and a golden retriever named Ci‐Ci.