Rik Farrow
Rik Farrow grew up near Washington, DC, receiving a BS in 1973. He returned to the University of Maryland to take classes in computer architecture and operating systems, and moved to the California Bay Area in 1979. He worked at North Star Computers, an early PC kit company, built his own computer and soon started consulting. His specialty in those early days was interfacing computers like his to other devices, through his understanding of both the hardware and the OS code. He started writing documentation for Bay Area computer companies, and was first exposed to the UNIX System. Back then documentation for UNIX fit into two binders. He got a big boost in understanding UNIX when he was hired to ghostwrite the book "Programmer's Guide to the UNIX System." In 1984 he was asked to research UNIX security and discovered that the only documentation on security consisted of two Bell System journal articles. He found a 14-page writeup of UNIX exploits at a nearby university and began his security career. By 1987 he had given a short presentation on UNIX security at the Hewlett-Packard auditorium. By 1989 he finished his second book, UNIX System Security and was teaching UNIX Security internationally. Farrow has designed courses for the NSA, NASA, USENIX, ISACA, and EurOpen. He taught Windows security in the late 1990s and has also been an editor for UNIXWorld Magazine and ;login:, the USENIX membership magazine and written hundreds of articles. See more at: http://rikfarrow.com/abou
