Richard Thieme - Biography

Biography

Richard Thieme was born in Chicago. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1965 with a B.A. in English literature. He later earned a M.A. in English at the University of Chicago, where he studied with noted Joycean scholar Richard Ellmann. Thieme spent two years in England, then returned to Chicago to attend Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he earned his Masters of Divinity degree and became an Episcopal priest.

Thieme was a priest for 16 years, during which he became acquainted with computers. He began writing about technology and culture, including the spiritual dimension of technology. In 1993, he began a new career of consulting, writing and speaking. He has spoken often at the Def Con and Blackhat Briefings security conferences, where he would introduce himself by pointing out that his experiences as a priest made him "more than qualified to talk about social engineering".

Thieme has spoken for sixteen years for the Black Hat Briefings USA (intelligence and corporate security) and Def Con, an annual computer hackers' convention. as well as Black Hat Windows – Seattle, Black Hat Amsterdam, and BH at GITEX in Dubai. He has also spoken for security conferences such as ReCon 2010 (Montreal), Troopers (Heidelberg Germany), Toor Con, PumpCon (invitation only), Interz0ne West, SecurityOPUS, Xmas Con (New Orleans 2600), RubiCon, HiverCon (Dublin), ShmooCon, NotaCon and RootFest. He keynoted AUSCERT in Brisbane, Australia in 2005 and 2006 and returned to deliver a closing speech in 2007. He was invited to keynote again in 2011. He keynoted govcert in The Hague in 2006 and in Rotterdam in 2009 and closed the conference in 2010. He keynoted Wireless Australia and the ID Management Summit in Sydney. He keynoted Microsoft Tech Ed in consecutive years in Eilat, Israel, and shared the keynote platform at MIS InfoSecWorld with Bob Woodward and NBC’s Roger Cressey. In 2007 he keynoted conferences in Auckland and Wellington NZ and was invited to return to keynote a corporate/government security conference in Wellington in 2009. He keynoted IT Defense in Berlin in 2009 and ReCon, a conference on reverse engineering, in Montreal Quebec in 2010. He has also been invited to speak in Oslo, Warsaw, Sao Paulo, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Singapore and Beijing. In May 2011 he spoke for the regional Infragard/ISSA Chicago quarterly meeting and keynoted the ITWeb Security Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and Hack in the Box in Amsterdam. He provided a closing keynote for eComm in June 2011 and keynoted Hack in the Box - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in October 2011. He also provided a closing keynote for eComm in San Francisco (“a TED talks for communications”) in June 2011.