This book owes a great deal to the many teachers, coworkers, teammates, and friends who've worked so hard for so long to teach me what I know about information security and insecurity, and about risk management and mismanagement. Where this book works well in conveying that body of knowledge, skills, and attitudes to you is a testament to their generosity in sharing their insights with me. I would also like to acknowledge my faculty teammates here at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for sharing their frank and candid views throughout many conversations on making this body of knowledge accessible and engaging in the classroom. The ideas and experiences of Dr. Aaron Glassman, Dr. Wesley Phillips, Dr. Robert “Trez” Jones, and Mr. Hamid Ait Kaci Azzou have profoundly affected my approach to what you see before you here in this book.

The combined team at Wiley/Sybex and at (ISC)² worked tirelessly to focus, strengthen, and clarify what I wanted to say and how I said it, all while keeping my voice and my teaching ideas authentic and on point. My thanks go out to the editorial team at Wiley/Sybex: Jim Minatel, Kim Wimpsett, Pete Gaughan, Lauren Freestone, Elizabeth Welch, Tiffany Taylor, and their technical reviewers Jacob Penovich, Scott Pike, and Raven Sims, as well as to Tara Zeiler and Charles Gaughf, our reviewers at (ISC)². Johnna VanHoose Dinse, Wiley's indexer, has also made the art of finding what you want in this book when you need it more of a science (and I've always had a soft spot for a great index!). Where this book works well for you, it works because of the efforts of all of those people to make this book the best it can be. What errors, omissions, misspeaks, and confusions that remain are mine, not theirs.

Finally, I wish to thank my wife Nancy. She saved my life and brought me peace. Her strength inspired me to say “yes” when Jim first called me about doing this book and has kept both of us healthy and happy throughout.

Mike Wills, SSCP, CISSP has spent more than 40 years as a computer systems architect, programmer, security specialist, database designer, consultant, and teacher (among other duties). Starting out as a bit of a phone phreak in his college days, he sharpened his skills on the 1960s generation of mainframes and minicomputers, just in time for the first 8080 and Z80 microprocessors to fuel the home computer revolution. Learning about the ARPANET just added spice to that mix. Since then, he's had ones, zeros, and now qubits under his fingernails too many times to count, whether as part of his jobs, his teaching, or his hobbies.

Mike earned his BS and MS degrees in computer science, both with minors in electrical engineering, from Illinois Institute of Technology, and his MA in Defence Studies from King's College, London. He is a graduate of the Federal Chief Information Officer program at National Defense University and the Program Manager's Course at Defense Systems Management College.

As an Air Force officer, Mike served in the National Reconnaissance Office, building and flying some of the most complex, cutting-edge space-based missions, large and small. As a “ground control” guy, he specialized in the design, operation, and support of highly secure, globe-spanning command, control, communications, and intelligence systems that support US and Coalition missions around the world. These duties often required Mike to “optimize” his way around the official configuration management and security safeguards—all on official business, of course.

No good deed going unpunished, he then spent two years on the Joint Staff as a policy and budget broker for all command, control, and communications systems, and then taught in the School of Information Warfare and Strategy at National Defense University. He's taught at senior leader colleges in both the United States and United Kingdom, and has been a continuing guest lecturer at the UK's Defence Academy. He served as adviser to the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee, Ministry of Justice, and Defence Science and Technology Laboratories on the national and personal security implications of science and technology policy; this led to him sometimes being known as the UK's nonresident expert on outer space law.

Currently he is an assistant professor of Applied Information Technologies in the College of Business at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University – Worldwide, where he is the change leader and academic visionary behind bringing the Microsoft Software and Systems Academy program into ERAU's classrooms at 13 locations around the United States. Prior to this, Mike helped create two new MS degrees—Information Security and Assurance, and Management of Information Systems—and was program chair of both during their launch and first year of teaching. He also taught in Worldwide's Security and Intelligence Studies program during its 2005 launch in ERAU's European Division.

Mike and his wife Nancy currently call Montevideo, Uruguay, their home. Living abroad since the end of the last century, they find new perspectives, shared values, and wonderful people wherever they go. As true digital nomads, it's getting time to move again. Where to? They'll find out when they get there.