Stephen Northcutt

Stephen Northcutt founded the GIAC certification and served as the founding president of the SANS Technology Institute, an accredited graduate school focused on cyber security. Stephen is author/coauthor of Incident Handling Step-by-Step, Intrusion Signatures and Analysis, Inside Network Perimeter Security 2nd Edition, IT Ethics Handbook, and Network Intrusion Detection 3rd Edition. He was the original author of the Shadow Intrusion Detection system before accepting the position of chief for information warfare at the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.

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Stephen is a graduate of Mary Washington College. Before entering the field of computer security, he worked as a Navy helicopter search and rescue crewman, white water raft guide, chef, martial arts instructor, cartographer, and network designer. Since 2007 Stephen has conducted over 40 in-depth interviews with leaders in the security industry, from CEOs of security product companies to the most well-known practitioners, in order to research the competencies required to be a successful leader in the security field. He maintains the SANS Leadership Laboratory, where research on these competencies is posted, as well as SANS Security Musings. He leads the Management 512 Alumni Forum, where hundreds of security managers post questions. He is the lead author for Management 512: SANS Security Leadership Essentials for Managers, a prep course for the GSLC certification that meets all levels of requirements for DoD Security Managers per DoD 8570. He also is the lead author/instructor for Management 514: IT Security Strategic Planning, Policy, and Leadership. Stephen blogs at the SANS Security Laboratory and is on the NewsBites and SANS Analyst teams. He has been involved in a number of security startups including SourceFire, Tenable, Savant Protection and Zimperium and currently serves as director of academic advising for SANS.EDU.