Neal O’Farrell is widely considered to be one of the world’s longest serving cybersecurity experts, 40 years and counting.

He’s also unique in that he’s divided those decades equally between building security awareness programs for the workplace, and educating and supporting consumers in the fight against scams and fraud.

And he’s spent nearly a decade focused on the psychology of security, hacking the brain to better understand how to get the best from it.

It’s that triple combination that gives him a very unique perspective and approach.

Neal was one of the earliest champions of employee security awareness – it’s been more than 25 years since his groundbreaking series called The Human Perimeter was voted one of Tech Target’s Top 10 Executive Briefings of the year for 2001.

He currently works with companies like real estate leader Cotality to develop the most comprehensive security education and awareness program for America’s real estate community where his presentations were the highest rated ever for cybersecurity.

Neal has taught audiences in more than 50 countries, blended psychology and cybersecurity in his series on PsyberResilience, and his security training has also been used by more than 100 universities.

In 2003 Neal launched Think Security First, the nation’s very first Cyber Secure City and a unique experiment to raise the security awareness of an entire city (Walnut Creek, CA, pop. 64,000). As part of that initiative, the entire city – residents, businesses, schools, even the Mayor, city council, and police department – participated in extensive security awareness training for an entire year.

Partners in the yearlong initiative included Microsoft, Cisco, McAfee, and AT&T, and received the endorsement of the US Chamber of Commerce, the Department of Homeland Security, and the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium, Inc. (ISC)².

Neal was an advisor to the first Federal Communications Commission’s cybersecurity roundtable, as well as to President Barack Obama’s Stock Act Panel and an effort to reduce insider trading by members of Congress and senior government employees.

In 2011 Neal won SC Magazine’s Editors Choice Award at RSA for his work in launching the non-profit Identity Theft Council. A former editor for the Hack Proofing series of security guides, he’s also currently a member of the expert review board for CNET with a focus on fraud and cybercrime.

Neal has been quoted in numerous publications around the world including the New York Times, Forbes, Inc., the Wall St. Journal, the Huffington Post, CNN Money, BusinessWeek, USA Today, SmartMoney, CNET, Information Week, the National Law Journal, Today.com, NBC, CBS, CNBC, Fox Business, and the South China Morning Post.

Today he talks about security with audiences across America from a centuries-old thatched cottage in the ancient Barony of Duhallow in the middle of the Irish countryside.

Read his full bio (PDF)