Mark Seiden is a former member of the Cutter Business Technology Council. He has consulted since 1983 in the areas of security, network, and software engineering to companies worldwide, with clients including startups, major computer and communication companies, financial institutions, law firms, UN agencies, online content providers, ISPs, research organizations, and nonprofits. As an independent consultant, and in varying roles at Securify (also known as Kroll O'Gara Information Security Group), his most recent projects have included design, architecture, and implementation for e-business systems; security for online financial transaction processing and distributed document processing systems; custom firewalls based on open-source components; finding computer criminals; and penetration testing the network and physical security of deployed systems, enterprises, and colocation facilities.

Mr. Seiden has 35 years' programming experience. He's been a Unix and mainframe system programmer; written Macintosh applications; spent time at IBM Research, Xerox Parc, Bell Labs, and Bellcore; and has taughtat the university level. Time Digital named him one of the 50 CyberElite in its first annual list, and he has been regularly quoted in the New York Times and other periodicals due to involvement in high-profile activities (such as the pursuit of Kevin Mitnick and revealing the vulnerabilities in airport security systems). Mr. Seiden has written for the New York Times, Wired, Sun Expert, and Unix Review (among others) and has been technical editor of several books about computing. He has been on the board of directors of two user groups and is on the Technical Advisory Board of Counterpane Security Systems. He can be reached at consulting@cutter.com.