Updated: March 9, 2007

Scott Charney serves as corporate vice president of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing (TwC) Group. The group's mission is to drive Trustworthy Computing principles and processes within Microsoft and throughout the IT ecosystem. This includes working with business groups throughout the company to ensure their products and services uphold Microsoft's security and privacy policies, controls and best practices. The TwC group also collaborates with the rest of the computer industry and the government to increase public awareness, education and other safeguards.

In addition, Charney oversees Microsoft's efforts to address critical infrastructure protection, Engineering Excellence, network security, and industry outreach about privacy and security.

Charney possesses a wealth of computer privacy and security experience in both the government and the private sector. Before joining Microsoft in 2002, he was a principal for the professional services organization PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), where he led the firm's Cybercrime Prevention and Response Practice. He provided computer security services to Fortune 500 companies and smaller enterprises. These services included designing and building computer security systems, testing existing systems and conducting cybercrime investigations.

Before PwC, Charney served as chief of the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. As the leading federal prosecutor for computer crimes, he helped prosecute nearly every major hacker case in the United States from 1991 to 1999. He co-authored the original Federal Guidelines for Searching and Seizing Computers, the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, federal computer crime sentencing guidelines and the Criminal Division's policy on appropriate computer use and workplace monitoring. He also chaired the Group of Eight nations (G8) Subgroup on High-Tech Crime, served as vice chair and head of the U.S. delegation to an ad hoc group of experts on global cryptography policy for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In addition, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to OECD's Group of Experts on Security, Privacy and Intellectual Property Rights in the Global Information Infrastructure.

Charney also served as an assistant district attorney in Bronx County, N.Y., where he later was named deputy chief of the Investigations Bureau. In addition to supervising 23 prosecutors, he developed a computer-tracking system that was later used throughout the city for tracking criminal cases.

Charney has received numerous professional awards, including the prestigious John Marshall Award for Outstanding Legal Achievement in 1995 and the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service in 1998. He was nominated to the Information System Security Association's Hall of Fame in 2000. That same year, the Washington Chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association presented him with its award for excellence in critical electronic infrastructure protection. Among his other affiliations, he served on the American Bar Association Task Force on Electronic Surveillance, the American Health Lawyers Association Task Force on Security and Electronic Signature Regulations, the Software Engineering Institute Advisory Board at Carnegie-Mellon University, and the Privacy Working Group of the Clinton administration's Information Infrastructure Task Force.

He holds a law degree with honors from Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y., and bachelor's degrees in history and English from the State University of New York in Binghamton.

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Recent Speeches

RSA Conference 2009
April 21, 2009

Testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security
March 10, 2009

Testimony for U.S. House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection
Nov. 19, 2003

Testimony for U.S. House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities
July 24, 2003