Boris Loza

Early Life and Education

Boris Loza was born on May 5, 1960, in Krasnodar, Russia, then part of the Soviet Union. His father worked as an agricultural engineer and his mother as a history schoolteacher. He studied computer science at the Kuban State Technological University, graduating in 1982 with a Master of Science in automation. In 1989, he earned a PhD in automation and chemistry, with research focused on implementing automatic controllers in chemical processes.

Career

Loza holds the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) credential and has accumulated broad industry experience across major corporations and government agencies. He worked for IBM Global Services as a Senior System Administrator and for Fidelity Investments as a Principal Information Systems Security Specialist. Over the course of his career he has consulted for Fortune and Global 500 companies, including IBM, AT&T, and Fidelity Investments, as well as government agencies and startups.

Since 2019, Loza has worked as a professor of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, initially at Seneca Polytechnic in Canada, where he received academic tenure, and subsequently as an adjunct professor at Capitol Technology University in the United States and Wilmington University in the United States. Since 2024, he has served as a doctoral advisor, external examiner, dissertation committee member, and subject matter expert at Capitol Technology University and Wilmington University. He also acts as a subject matter expert in legal proceedings.

Notable Work

Loza has contributed more than 40 articles to US industry publications, including USENIX ;login:, SysAdmin, Inside Solaris, Inside the Internet, and others. His work has appeared in prominent hacker magazines, including the original Phrack and 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. His writing, produced in both Russian and English, has been translated into French, Czech, and German.

In 2004, he published UNIX, Solaris and Linux: A Practical Security Cookbook: Securing UNIX Operating Systems without Third-Party Application. His research in information security has been cited in several reference works, including Information Security: The Complete Reference, Second Edition, DTrace: Dynamic Tracing in Oracle Solaris, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD, BPF Performance Tools, UNIX: The Complete Reference, Second Edition, and Hack Proofing Sun Solaris 8.

Among the security products Loza has developed, either independently or with co-authors, are HackerProof — an external vulnerability scanning tool available as software and as a standalone device, along with a website certification service — as well as External, Internal and Mobile SafePatrol, a computer security system for personal and corporate use, and TrackDrive, a remote hard drive erasing application. He has filed and received multiple information security patents in the United States and has conducted hundreds of security assessments, forensic investigations, penetration tests, and white-hat hacking evaluations.

Recognition

In 2008, Loza was recognized internationally for his contributions to computer security awareness. He won the first international Cyber Security Awareness Contest, organized by (ISC)², for a series of articles on information security awareness.

Publications

In addition to his technical book on UNIX security, Loza has authored North Caucasus Dolmens: In Search of Wonders and the Russian-language travel narrative В поисках необычного. Рассказы о путешествиях.