So who did the five-year-old New York company hire in June as its first chief security officer? The co-author of a book that Wired magazine’s online edition called a “hacker how-to.”
The new security chief, 37-year-old Ken Pfeil, contributed a chapter to Stealing the Network: How to Own the Box, recently released by Syngress Publishing. The 330-page book spells out in alarming detail just how easy it is to compromise network security systems. The aim, says Pfeil, is to awaken complacent corporate executives to “how various scenarios play out for the hacker and the antihacker.” His fellow authors include two data security consultants, Mark Burnett and Joe Grand, as well as a hacker who calls himself FX.
Wired called the book a “perfect summer read,” and it briefly cracked Amazon.com’s top 100 sellers’ list. Pfeil, who has worked in computer security for Avaya, Merrill Lynch and Microsoft, insists that Stealing the Network doesn’t divulge any techniques that hackers don’t already know. Capital IQ’s 400 clients -- many of them investment bankers and venture capitalists -- have nothing to worry about, he adds. “We notice probes -- mostly people playing around, looking for chinks in the armor -- and react accordingly,” Pfeil says. “We’ve never had a break-in, and one reason I’m here is to keep up that record.”
