Simson L. Garfinkel is an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, and a fellow at the Center for Research on Computation and Society at Harvard University. His research interests include computer forensics, the emerging field of usability and security, personal-information management, and information policy and terrorism.

Garfinkel is currently a contributing editor at Technology Review and an editor at large at CSO, for which he writes the award-winning monthly column "Machine Shop." Previously, he was a weekly contributor to the Boston Globe, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Christian Science Monitor. He was a founding contributor to Wired.

Garfinkel is a consulting scientist at Basis Technology and a founder of Sandstorm Enterprises. He is also the author or coauthor of 14 books on computing. He is perhaps best known for his book Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century. Garfinkel's most successful book, Practical UNIX and Internet Security (coauthored with Gene Spafford), has sold more than 250,000 copies in more than a dozen languages.