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Steve Gold(Booted up 15 January 1956 – Logged off 12 January 2015) Steve Gold, who died from complications arising from a heart operation on January 12th 2015, was an internationally renowned expert and commentator in the field of IT crime and cyber terrorism. This stemmed from his 11 years of experience, which culminated in his role as a senior internal auditor/fraud investigator in the National Health Service. As a journalist Steve has been specialising in communications as well as IT security for approaching three decades. He has written on a freelance basis for a number of titles, including Accountancy Age, Computer Weekly, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, Euromedia, the Guardian (IT and healthcare sections), IPTV, Micro Decision, Mobile News, Personal Computer World, The Review (Gemalto's house business magazine) and The Times. He assisted and co-wrote later editions of the Hackers Handbook, alongside Professor Peter Sommer, which was published in six editions between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s. It was a seminal communications book of its time and sold in excess of 100,000 copies. Steve started his full-time journalistic career as a staff writer on Microscope in 1986 and helped launch PC Dealer, a trade computer reseller magazine the following year, where he rapidly moved from technical editor to editor in the space of four years. He left the title to pursue a freelance career in 1991, helping Paul Robinson to found SC Magazine, the world's first dedicated IT security news publication in 1994, as freelance news editor, a position he held until Paul sold the title to Haymarket Publishing in 2004. In parallel with this, he helped a fellow team of US, Canadian and Australian writers launch and evolve a pioneering IT newswire - Newsbytes News Network - in the US in 1985. He and his colleagues later went on to sell the highly successful newswire to the Washington Post in the early 2000s. In 2004 he joined Infosecurity Magazine as a contributor and soon became technical editor, assisting a succession of editors over a period of seven years in evolving both the print and online publications as the IT security industry developed and matured. At his death, he was group editor for LGN Media, which publishes Cloud Computing World, Lawtech Magazine and Netcomms Europe. He also contributed to the news pages of SC Magazine on a regular basis.
* Will anyone with material that they feel might be suitable for a "memorial" site please send it to sg1@silentmodems.com ** Update 17:00 13JAN15:- We have been contacted by a number of Steve's many colleagues and friends with a variety of insights and snippets. Keep them coming please. We will also be culling from the numerous FB threads covering today's sad news.. Excellent Obit by SC Magazine and The Register CRN has joined the list of tributes A blog entry by Eskenszi expressed appreciation from the PR world. And another by his partner in cyber crime fighting at ContraRISK, Steve Mansfield-Devine. Partha Goswami in LawTech I can only echo the comments made by others who knew him better than I, that he was kind, had a great sense of humour and fun, and had great stories to tell. He will be missed and it is such a sad loss. ...Richard Williams Just being with Steve was always entertaining and he invariably had a fund of industry anecdotes to share. He also seemed to know the IT future way before it happened. One of the great fun people in the industry and my thoughts go out to his family. ...Richard Jones He inspired me to run my own (irregular) comment and news pages on Prestel; I left home and moved to London to rent a room from his friend of his (and the standby Micromouse,) We spoke many times, although not as much as we should have over the last few years. Steve, you were a great chap, a good friend, an amazing writer, and you will be sorely missed. ...Rob O'Donnell In the early 80s Steve Gold was a founder member of the Database Publications editorial team such was his broad knowledge of the microcomputer market that his contributions were not limited to single machine but spread across the whole spectrum of their computer specific publications. He played a major part in the first telecoms publication launched in the UK Telelink in addition he assisted in the development of Microlink and a precursor to the email systems we all take for granted today. He gave many presentations at a large number of computer exhibitions when he was not at work in the exhibition theatre he could often be found giving holding forth in the bar. " In those early days it often was a case of the blind leading the blind however Steve seem to have 2020 vision and it came to predicting developments within the microcomputer market" ...Peter Brameld
Open email to John Whittingdale MP, Chair of the House of Commons Department of Culture Media and Sport Committee - the committee that oversees the internet. |