chief hacking officernoun.
The person in a corporation who is responsible for testing systems and programs to see if they are vulnerable to attacks by malicious hackers.
Example Citation:
"According to Dittrich, organizations should consider purchasing insurance to cover service disruptions, build incident response teams and hire a full-time chief hacking officer to scout for vulnerabilities and evaluate known attacks."
—Ann Harrison, "Stopping Attacks at Their Source," Computerworld, October 2, 2000
Earliest Citation:
"Marc Maiffret, chief hacking officer for the Internet security consulting firm of eEye Digital Security of Corona del Mar, Calif., says credit card information is stolen online almost every day."
—"Security considerations should be at top of list," Rochester Business Journal, January 28, 2000
Notes:
Today's c-level title has been in the news of late because it's used by a fellow named Marc Maiffret. He works for eEye Digital, the company that told the world about the Code Red worm that has caused such a panic over the past week. It looks like Mr. Maiffret can be given credit for coining the title because the earliest citation also refers to him.
