Mark S. Merkow, CISSP, CISM, CSSLP, works at PayPal Inc. (an eBay company) in Scottsdale, Arizona, as Manager of Security Consulting and IT Security Strategy in the Information Risk Management area. Mark has over 35 years of experience in information technology in a variety of roles, including applications development, systems analysis and design, security engineer, and security manager. Mark holds a Masters in Decision and Info Systems from Arizona State University (ASU), a Masters of Education in Distance Learning from ASU, and a BS in Computer Info Systems from ASU. In addition to his day job, Mark engages in a number of extracurricular activities, including consulting, course development, online course delivery, writing e-business columns, and writing books on information technology and information security.

Mark has authored or co-authored nine books on IT and has been a contributing editor to four others.

Mark remains very active in the information security community, working in a variety of roles for the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), the Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC), and the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council (FSCCC) on Homeland Security and Critical Infrastructure Protection.

Lakshmikanth Raghavan (Laksh) works at PayPal Inc. (an eBay company) as Staff Information Security Engineer in the Information Risk Management area. He has over eight years of experience in the areas of information security and information risk management and has been providing consulting services to Fortune 500 companies and financial services companies around the world in his previous stints. He is a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) and also maintains the Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) certificate from ISACA (previously known as the Information Systems Audit and Control Association). Laksh holds a Bachelor's degree in Electronics & Telec Less