About Me

I am a husband with an amazing wife who tolerates all of my tomfoolery.

I am an engineer and technologist, living in Woodstock, Maryland. I went to college at the University of Delaware and earned a Bachelors degree in Computer Engineering and a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering. I worked for the DoD while in college and then for some years afterwards. Most of my professional work has focused on information security. I have contributed to industry-wide standards within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) - where I worked on early requirements and specifications for Network Endpoint Assessment (NEA) - and the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), where I worked on many of the early Network Access Control (NAC) specifications.

Recent professional work has focused on application security (AppSec), the science of crafting software applications that are resistant to attack. I currently work as a senior security engineer for a large financial firm in Baltimore, Maryland, where I work with developers to enhance the security of applications through education, code reviews, and deployment of modern application security techniques and frameworks. My current interests focus on mobile application security and exploring the new capabilities offered by the Android mobile platform. I am the author of Application Security for the Android Platform, published by O'Reilly Media in December 2011, the first book on secure coding and application security for Android developers. I also do some short-term consulting related to Android development and mobile application security.

I am a software developer. I've been programming since elementary school, learned all sorts of fun computer science stuff in college, and then learned real development and coding while working. I currently write apps for the Android mobile platform (and a little iOS) and find the development experience for mobile devices to be very exciting. You can see some of my software development projects here.

I teach, mostly at the college level. In 2010, I developed and taught a course on Secure Software Design at the University of Delaware and currently teach this course once each academic year. Previously, I developed, maintained, and taught a junior/senior-level undergraduate course focused on the Java language and programming environment that ran at UD from Spring 2001 until the course was depreciated due to a curriculum change in Spring 2009. I have also taught courses on general computer science at UD, and digital logic design & computer architecture on the engineering side at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC).

I am strongly dedicated to maintaining high levels of both physical and mental health. I am a triathlete and and compete in the amateur age group division, mostly at the Olympic and Half-Iron (70.3) distances. I also race all three triathlon sports (swim, bike, run) individually, with past highlights including the Disney Goofy Challenge (running the Half Marathon on Saturday and then the full Marathon on Sunday, totaling 39.3mi over two days) and the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim, which features a 4.4 mile swim between the spans of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Running is definitely my strongest of the three and I love long runs in the early fall more than I can express. I keep a blog specifically about triathlon and other endurance sports which you can read here.

I am a lifeguard and lifeguarding instructor. I've been a lifeguard since 1993, which accounts for a huge portion of my life. Over those years, I've been a lifeguard, head lifeguard, pool manager, indoor waterpark supervisor, age group swim coach, and lifeguarding instructor. I'm a licensed Ellis & Associates International Lifeguard Training Program (ILTP) Special Facilities Instructor and currently teach classes (lifeguarding, CPR, AED, BLS, and first aid) and help organize and run the training program for Columbia Association's Aquatics Department, where I am the most senior instructor, responsible for the training of over 400 lifeguards annually. Part of this includes the development of new and more junior instructors and pool management staff.

More professional information is on my .