Scott Augenbaum became the "cyber guy" in the FBI’s field office in Syracuse, New York, working almost exclusively on computer crime cases. In 1998, the FBI made its first attempt to establish a national cyber strategy to combat online crimes and mandated each of its 56 field offices dedicate one agent to computer crime investigations. In October 2003, Augenbaum was promoted to supervisory special agent at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., which provided him with a national perspective on the growing threat of computer crimes. He was assigned to the Cyber Division, Cyber Crime Fraud Unit andwas responsible for managing the FBI’s Cyber Task Force Program and IntellectualProperty Rights Program. In 2006, Augenbaum was promoted to supervisory agent in the FBI Memphis Division, where he helped launch the FBI’s first local Computer Intrusion/Counterintelligence squad. During the last ten years of Augenbaum’s FBI career, he provided more than one thousand cybercrime threat briefings to corporations and other public groups with the goal of educating the community on emerging computer intrusion threats and how to avoid becoming the victim of a data breach. Augenbaum retired from the FBI in January 2018. He lives with his wife and children in Nashville, Tennessee, where he recently launched Hero Publishing, a company devoted to educating the public about the dangers of cybercrimes.
