Karen Scarfone '93

Karen Scarfone is principal consultant for Scarfone Cybersecurity in Clifton, Virginia. She develops cybersecurity-related white papers, technical standards, articles, and other publications for security vendors, media companies, and Federal agencies. She has also co-authored three security books and contributed to eight others, as well as various journal and conference papers on security. Karen has more than 20 years of professional experience in information technology, with over 15 years of that dedicated to information security.

Karen was formerly a senior computer scientist for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, where she oversaw the development of system and network security publications for federal civilian agencies and the public. She has co-authored more than 50 NIST special publications and interagency reports during the past 10 years. In recognition of her work for NIST, Karen received a Federal 100 award and a Department of Commerce Bronze Medal Award. She also received a Gold Medal Award from the Department of Commerce for her contributions to security automation standards development.

Karen holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from UW-Parkside, a master's degree in computer science from the University of Idaho, and a master's degree in technical writing from Utah State University.

In her spare time, Karen volunteers as a technical editor and writer for the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN).