In 1977, Stephen Northcutt ’81 left his job as a U.S. Navy helicopter search-and-rescue crewman and headed to Mary Washington to study geology. Today, he is a leading expert in cyber security. The career path wasn’t obvious, but Northcutt excels at seeing − and seizing − opportunities that others don’t. He spent the last 12 years as CEO of the SANS Institute, a cooperative research and education organization he helped launch in 1989. SANS − an acronym for “systems administration, networking, and security” − offers information-security training and certification. If a professional receives SANS Institute’s rigid Global Information Assurance Certification, it means he has high-level skills in one of more than 20 branches of security and development. Today, Northcutt’s focus is developing the SANS Technology Institute, a Maryland-based cyber security graduate school that offers master-of-science degrees in information-security engineering and management. “In my previous … [Read more...]