Wes Sonnenreich

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Some extra background not found on the CV:

    Since 1995, Wes Sonnenreich has been President of The Sonnenreich Corporation. It is a family business that was started by his grandfather in the 70's. Major clients have included General Electric, Disney, Novartis, Guess Inc. and others.

    From 2002-2007 Wes co-founded an information security consulting and software service company called SageSecure. It's flagship product is called SecureMark and is an information security risk-management assessment tool designed for executives.From 1998-2001 he additionally served as Chief Technologyofficer for Glocal Communications, an internet strategy and solutions companydedicated to the pharmaceutical industry. With offices in Boston,D.C., London, Basel, and Tokyo, Glocal's client list representedover 60% of the global pharmaceutical industry.The Sonnenreich Corporation was responsible for developing the coretechnology for Glocal.

    Wes was the founding director of the Academy of Applied Science's Global School District project (original site) started in September of 1995. The Sonnenreich Corporation was responsible for thedevelopment of a patented communications package thatenables students and teachers all over the world to learn and teachtogether. Prior to this, he had directed the Academy's Minuteman network, a projectthat has connected the independent inventor community for the purposesof notifying of, and unifying against, legislature that affects the rights of independent inventors.

    Over the course of the 1995 academic year Wes co-organized MIT's $50K entrepreneurial business plan competition. His accomplishments were to raise the prize fund from $10K to $50K, and massively expand the organizational staff such that future competitions were no longer dependent on a single person, as the case had been.

    In 1990, he was part of a three person team that used a $250,000 grant from Cablevision and equivalently valued equipment donations to design and built a fiber-optic distance learning network, TV production studio and computer graphics lab for South Side High School in Rockville Centre, NY. The studio rivals many professional broadcasting centers and is constantly used by students to produce network-quality broadcasts of plays, concerts, sports, events and original student films.

Education:

    Wes Sonnenreich received a B.S. in Computer Science and Music from theMassachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996. In 2001 he attended Harvard Business School's Executive Education "Program for Global Leadership".

Major Research and Publications:

    The Rosetta Stone – A framework for comparing security regulations and standards (2006)
    Computer Security Institute
    Presented at the 2006 annual CSI conference in Orlando, Florida.

    “Return on Security Investment (ROSI) – a practical quantitative model” (2006)
    Journal of Research and Practice in Information Technology, Vol 38
    Presented at the 2005 Workshop on Security in Information Systems.

    “Network Security Illustrated” (McGraw-Hill, 2003)
    co-author with Jason Albanese, sold 10,000+ copies to date
    Provides decision-makers with essential knowledge about security concepts and technologies. Now being used as a course textbook at Curtin School of Business.

    "Internet Strategy Guide" (2001): Information collected and organized by the Sonnenreich Corporation throughout its extensive consulting experience in the field. A thorough reference guide for any Internet initiatives. There are also accompanying lecture slides since this document is often used as backup for consulting presentations.

    "Building Linux and OpenBSD Firewalls" (Wiley): WesSonnenreich and Tom Yates have authored this step-by-step guide for building and operating a firewall using open source technology. Wes also maintains a related website: OpenlySecure.org which contains original content on topics related to Open Source security.

    "The Web Developer's Guide to Search Engines" (Wiley): WesSonnenreich and Tim Macinta have authored a book that aims to helpwebmasters choose, install, and configure search engines for their web sites.

    "A Finance Major's Primer" (McGraw Hill): Wes has co-authored and edited this text book used in graduate finance classes at NYU's Stern School of Business.

    US Patent 5,974,446 (Issued: Oct. 1999): Title: An Internet based distance learning system for communicating between server and clients wherein clients communicate with eachother or with teacher using different communication techniques via common user interface.

    "Universe Symphony" (CharlesIves/Johnny Reinhard): Wes assisted composer Johnny Reinhard, helping him in his endeavor to complete this massive, unfinished symphonic work. Working off of very old and incomplete sketch sheets from Yale's Ives archives, the piece was completed and premiered at Lincoln Center in June. Wes aided in the background research and analysis of the Ives sketches, as well as in the organization of the logistically complicated rehearsal sessions.

Lectures, Conferences:

    Internet Strategy Issues: First presented to the Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants annual assembly. The Sonnenreich Corporation's Internet Strategy Guide was handed out. Follow the link for HTML and PDF versions of the guide, lecture notes and slides.

    Privacy and Security on the Internet: First presented at the American Association of Medical Society Executives annual meeting, this lecture has proven extremely popular. Lecture notes are available.

    Firewall Technology: Wes Sonnenreich and Tom Yates first presented this day long course at The Bazaar, an open source exposition held at the Javits Center in NY, 1999. The course, geared for network professionals, was one of the top attended/rated courses at the event.

    Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Marketing Issues on the Internet: (Sept, 1999) Medicine in the Public Interest held a conference on Internet DTC marketing. Wes discussed new techniques for promoting medical information on the Internet with a panel that included from Tufts Medical School, the FTC, and the Pharmaceutical Industry.

    New Opportunities with Distance Education: This lecture is targeted towards teachers and academic officials as part of the Global School District program. It has been presented at a number of Junior Science and Humanities Symposium conventions (a major national competition jointly sponsored by the US Armed Forces), as well as at smaller academic meetings.

Software Developed:

    EZAdmin (2001): The EZAdmin system is a complete content management system written in PHP. It is a GPL-licensed open source project that is being hosted by SourceForge. The software is used by the Sonnenreich Corporation to create effective and flexible informational web sites.

    NatWest Markets (1995): built a complete system for trading options based on volatility analysis. System interfaced with real-time Reuters stock data and historical databases through an easy to use and intuitive graphical interface.

    MIT Media Lab -- salient stills (1994): created a user interface for an image analysis package that had previously been command-line input only.
               -- the Alive project (1992-1993): worked with intelligent autonomous agent technology in its infancy. Dealt with video/computer graphics interfacing issues.

Interests:

    Music: Wes plays the trombone and the piano. He used to play trombone with various jazz and rock groups around the Boston area, including the Go Luckies, the MIT Jazz Collective and Fred's Bowling Ball (a group formed by the remaining sane members of the Go Luckies). Wes also composes and arranges. Major projects include "Mars, the Bringer of War" (from The Planets Suite by Gustav Holst) arranged for massive brass ensemble, a restoration of the "Pines of Rome" (Otto Rospiggi), "Fantasy on Joy Spring" (an original suite based on a Clifford Brown tune) for brass ensemble, and numerous jazz originals and arrangements for various orchestrations (4 trombones, jazz combo, big band, brass ensemble, etc.). He is a big fan and occasional roadie for the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra. He's just starting to get into electronica and plans on producing interesting remixes and original tunes eventually.

    Philanthropy: Wes works with a number of non-profit organizations pro-bono, including the Academy for Applied Science, the Foundation for Nutritional Advancement, Medicine in the Public Interest and the Boston Medical Center. Eventually he hopes to start the Sonnenreich Foundation. Its charter will be to fully realize the promise of the Global School District.


Crypto Info:

If you wish to contact me via secure email, please use PGP. You can find my public key here. Note that you MUST verify the fingerprint of this key before using it. You can do this in a number of ways:

  • Contact me directly -- either by phone or face to face. I will give you the fingerprint
  • Some of my newer business cards have my fingerprint on them... if you have one, you're all set
  • You'll find it at: my sourceforge diary page (username sonnywes, diary entry: My PGP FingerPrint, date 2002-02-07)
  • I've attempted to spread the fingerprint around the net. It's part of my email signature. I have posted to a number of lists. Eventually I'll link to cached web versions of these messages. For now, happy hunting!
  • Using the key ID (3A06B8F04457C4D6) you can retrieve the key from a public key server and compare.