Associate Professor of Computer Sciences (1987)
B.A., mathematics and computer science, SUNY College at Brockport, 1979; M.S., information and computer science, Georgia Institute of Technology, 1981; Ph.D., information and computer science, Georgia Institute of Technology, 1986
Before coming to Purdue, Dr. Spafford was a research scientist with the Software Engineering Research Center at Georgia Institute of Technology. While there, he participated in research efforts in software testing, software engineering liability, and distributed computing (the Clouds project).
Dr. Spafford's current research interests are focused on issues of computer and network security, computer crime and ethics, and the social impact of computing. He is the founder and director of the COAST Project -- the world's largest academic research group dedicated to issues of practical information security. His other interests include software engineering, electronic message systems, and computer science education.
Among other professional activities, Dr. Spafford is a member of the ACM's U.S. Public Policy Committee, he is on the Board of Directors of the Sun User Group, and he is a member of the advisory board of the National Research Center on Computers and Society. Dr. Spafford is on the editorial and advisory boards of the International Journal of Computer and Software Engineering, the Virus Bulletin, the Journal of Artificial Life, Computers & Security, and the Journal of Information Systems Security. In 1996, he was named a charter recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Golden Core.
Dr. Spafford is coauthor of the recent award-winning book Practical Unix and Internet Security (with S. L. Garfinkel), published by O'Reilly and Associates (1991, 1996). He was a contributing editor on Computer Crime: A Crime-Fighter's Handbook (1995), and Web Security and Commerce (1997), both published by O'Reilly.
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