Carey Nachenberg is the chief engineer at Symantec Corporation (one of the original inventors of Norton Antivirus) and the author of a new cyber-security-themed thriller entitled The Florentine Deception. Carey is using the novel as the basis of a charity effort to support charities benefitting underserved students and veterans (including KIPP.org, Success Academy, and NPower.org, among others). As such, he is looking for partner organizations to help get the word out. He has already pledged $4,300 from sales, but am trying to reach a target of $10,000. So any exposure from the security community will go a long way toward helping his charities.
So what is the novel about? The Florentine Deception is, at its heart, an edge-of-your-seat cyber-security adventure that combines the action elements of Da Vinci Code with the technology elements of CSI: Cyber. It follows twenty-something Alex Fife has he hunts for an elusive object known as the "Florentine," and inadvertently stumbles upon an Iranian effort to decimate the US's computing infrastructure. The cyber-security aspects of the story are actually feasible, and in fact the book’s foreword was written by Dr. Eugene Spafford, PhD of Purdue’s CERIAS, (and one of my role models), who corroborates the technical elements of the story.
For background on Carey's book, his biography, his charities, etc., please see: www.florentinedeception.com
