Simson L. Garfinkel (born 1965) is an American computer scientist. He is the Chief Scientist and Chief Operating Officer of BasisTech in

Somerville, Massachusetts Somerville ( ) is a city located directly to the northwest of Boston, and north of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the city had a total population of 81, ...

. He was previously a program scientist at AI2050, part of Schmidt Futures. He has held several roles across government, including a Senior Data Scientist at the

Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior, home, or public security ministries in other countries. Its missions invol ...

, the US Census Bureau's Senior Computer Scientist for Confidentiality and Data Access and a computer scientist at the

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into Outline of p ...

. From 2006 to 2015, he was an associate professor at the

Naval Postgraduate School Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is a Naval command with a graduate university mission, operated by the United States Navy and located in Monterey, California. The NPS mission is to provide "defense-focused graduate education, including clas ...

Monterey, California Monterey ( ; ) is a city situated on the southern edge of Monterey Bay, on the Central Coast (California), Central Coast of California. Located in Monterey County, California, Monterey County, the city occupies a land area of and recorded a popu ...

. In addition to his research, Garfinkel is a

journalist A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...

, an

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

and an

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

; his work is generally concerned with

computer security Computer security (also cybersecurity, digital security, or information technology (IT) security) is a subdiscipline within the field of information security. It consists of the protection of computer software, systems and computer network, n ...

privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...

and

information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...

Education

Garfinkel obtained three BS degrees from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

in 1987. One in Chemistry, another one in Political Science and the third one in Humanities.Simson Garfinkel CV, https://simson.net/page/Curriculum_Vitae Furthermore does he have a MS in

journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree of accuracy. The word, a noun, applies to the journ ...

from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

in 1988 and a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

from MIT in 2005. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Research on Computation and Society at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

from September 2005 through August 2008.

Research

Garfinkel's early research was in the field of

optical storage Optical storage refers to a class of data storage systems that use light to read or write data to an underlying optical media. Although a number of optical formats have been used over time, the most common examples are optical disks like th ...

. While he was an undergraduate at the

MIT Media Laboratory The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...

, Garfinkel developed CDFS, the first file system for write-once optical disk systems. During the summer of 1987, he worked at Brown University's IRIS Project, where he developed a server allowing CDROMs to be shared over a network simultaneously by multiple workstations. In 1991, while a senior editor at '' NeXTWORLD'' magazine, Garfinkel created an address book program for the

NeXT Computer NeXT Computer (also called the NeXT Computer System) is a workstation computer that was developed, marketed, and sold by NeXT Inc. It was introduced in October 1988 as the company's first and flagship product, at a price of , aimed at the high ...

called SBook. One of SBook's most popular features was a search field that performed a full-text search of ''all'' of the records in the address book with each keypress. This kind of search is now standard on many computer programs, including

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

Mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...

application and

Mozilla Thunderbird Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source email client that also functions as a personal information manager with a Digital calendar, calendar and contactbook, as well as an RSS feed reader, chat client (IRC/XMPP/Matrix (protocol), Matrix), ...

. SBook was one of the first programs to incorporate this kind of search technology. In 1995, Garfinkel moved to

Martha's Vineyard Martha's Vineyard, often simply called the Vineyard, is an island in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, lying just south of Cape Cod. It is known for being a popular, affluent summer colony, and includes the smaller peninsula Chappaquiddick Isla ...

and started Vineyard.NET, the island's first Internet Service Provider. Vineyard.NET was bought by Broadband2Wireless, a wireless ISP, in 2000. The company went bankrupt in September 2001, and Garfinkel bought Vineyard.NET back from the debtor's estate. In 1998, Garfinkel founded Sandstorm Enterprises, a computer security firm that developed advanced computer forensic tools used by businesses and governments to audit their systems. Sandstorm was acquired by Niksun in 2010. Garfinkel is the inventor of six

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

s, mostly in the field of computer security. In 2003, Garfinkel and Abhi Shelat published an article in ''IEEE Security & Privacy'' magazine reporting on an experiment in which they purchased 158 used hard drives from a variety of sources and checked to see whether they still contained readable data. Roughly one third of the drives appeared to have information that was highly confidential and should have been erased prior to the drive's resale. In 2006, Garfinkel introduced cross-drive analysis, an unsupervised machine learning algorithm for automatically reconstructing social networks from hard drives and other kinds of data-carrying devices that are likely to contain pseudo-unique information. In September 2006, Garfinkel joined the faculty of the

(NPS) in

, as an associate professor of Computer Science. He moved to

Arlington, Virginia Arlington County, or simply Arlington, is a County (United States), county in the U.S. state of Virginia. The county is located in Northern Virginia on the southwestern bank of the Potomac River directly across from Washington, D.C., the nati ...

, in June 2010 to help NPS with its research aims in the National Capital Region. He transitioned to the National Institute of Standards and Technology in January 2015, and to the US Census Bureau in 2017. A common theme throughout Garfinkel's research is introduction of the scientific method to

digital forensics Digital forensics (sometimes known as digital forensic science) is a branch of forensic science encompassing the recovery, investigation, examination, and analysis of material found in digital devices, often in relation to mobile devices and com ...

Honors

Garfinkel was named a Fellow of the ACM in 2012, a fellow of the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

in 2019 and a fellow of the AAAS in 2021

Publications

Garfinkel is the author or co-author of 16 books, and the author of more than a thousand articles.Simson Garfinkel Bio, http://simson.net/page/Bio He is a contributing writer for ''

Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "''The''" in its name on April 23, 1998, under then pu ...

'' and has written as a freelancer for many publications including ''

Wired magazine ''Wired'' is a bi-monthly American magazine that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. It is published in both print and Online magazine, online editions by Condé Nast. The magazine has been in public ...

'', ''

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe,'' also known locally as ''the Globe'', is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Boston Globe'' is the oldest and largest daily new ...

'', ''Privacy Journal,'' and ''CSO Magazine.'' His work for ''CSO Magazine'' earned him five regional and national journalism awards, including the Jesse H. Neal Business Journalism Awards in 2003 and 2004.
Garfinkel is also the editor o
The Forensics Wiki

Books

# The Computer Book: From the Abacus to Artificial Intelligence, 250 Milestones in the History of Computer Science (Sterling Milestones), by Simson L. Garfinkel and Rachel H. Grunspan. 2018 (Sterling) # Usable Security: History, Themes, and Challenges], by Simson Garfinkel and Heather Lipford, 2014. (Morgan & Claypool, part of the Synthesis Lectures on Information Security, Privacy and Trust series.) # # # # # Web Security, Privacy and Commerce, with Gene Spafford. 2001. (O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.) #
review
by Peter G. Neumann an
review
by Eugene Spafford, in the RISKS Digest) # #
review
by Rob Slade in the RISKS Digest) # #
review
by Peter G. Neumann in the RISKS Digest) # # # #

References

External links

Simson Garfinkel's home page

Simson Garfinkel's official website
at the

{{DEFAULTSORT:Garfinkel, Simson 1965 births American computer scientists American male journalists American technology writers Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism alumni 2012 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Living people Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Naval Postgraduate School faculty People from Arlington County, Virginia Place of birth missing (living people) Wired (magazine) people Journalists from Virginia Scientists from Virginia