Alan Paller

Alan Paller founded SANS, a professional cybersecurity training school that trains more than 40,000 cybersecurity technologists each year. He was the founder and former president of SANS Technology Institute, the nation's first regionally accredited specialized cybersecurity college and graduate school. Alan edited NewsBites, the twice-weekly curated summary of the most important news stories in cybersecurity, oversaw a global program that identifies and celebrates people responsible for remarkable improvement in cyber risk reduction, and chaired the annual RSA keynote panel on the "Seven Most Dangerous New Attack Vectors."

Alan has testified before the US Senate and House of Representatives and was an initial member of President Clinton's National Infrastructure Assurance Council. He was chosen by President Bush's OMB and the Federal CIO Council as the 2005 Azimuth Award winner, a lifetime achievement award recognizing outstanding service of a single, non-government person to improving federal information technology. In 2010, the Washington Post named him one of seven people "worth knowing in cyber security." Alan co-chaired the DHS Homeland Security Advisory Committee's 2012 Task Force on Cyber Skills and headed the Task Force on Best Practices in Cybersecurity for the FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council and was a member of the NASA Advisory Council.

Earlier in his career Alan helped build one of the first large software companies, took it public, and merged it into a larger company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. He authored two books, The EIS Book: Information Systems for Top Managers and How to Give the Best Presentation of Your Life and founded the National Computer Graphics Association, the EIS Institute and The Data Warehousing Institute. Even earlier he was the founder and CEO of a mid-sized government contracting organization (AUI) focused on applying computer graphics to problems ranging from flight paths for airports to education and drug funding targeting. He also founded Econometric Research Associates, a litigation support firm specializing in providing data-intensive expert testimony in major trials. He and U.S. District Court Judge Robert R. Merhige, Jr. were selected as the faculty for the American Law Institute's national training program on "Direct and Cross-Examination of Plaintiff's Expert Witness." He earned degrees in Engineering and Computer Science from Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was a registered Professional Engineer.

Alan's Contributions and Leadership

• SANS Institute - Founder Nov 1988
• SANS Technology Institute - President, 2004-2021
• Director of the Cyber Talent Institute Center for Internet Security
• Director of the National Cyber Scholarship Foundation
• Co-chair, Committee on Best Practices in Cybersecurity of Telecommunications Companies, CSRIC
• Co-chair, TaskForce of CyberSkills, Homeland Security Advisory Committee
• Board Member Center for Internet Security (CIS)