When you come down to it, Michael Gibbons is a cop. He just happens to be a top-notch consultant, too. “I spent a long time in the FBI, but even there, most of the time I was doing consulting work. Still, they let me arrest people, too,” he says. Gibbons probably is best known for what turned out to be the first big computer crime bust, written up in Cliff Stoll’s best-seller The Cuckoo’s Egg, a title referring to a hacker trick for burying code.

Gibbons left the FBI just before Y2K and now leads a Unisys group in its global public sector practice that is working with a dozen different government agencies, including Homeland Security and Transportation, to combat IT-related crime. However, he doesn’t get to arrest many people these days. “About half my time is spent in public policy forums,” he reports.

The rest he spends working directly with clients and working with consortiums of private companies and government agencies on IT security issues. “I’m on the executive committee of the IT Sector Coordinating Council, where I’m spending a lot of time on risk assessment,” he explains. He also acts as an intermediary between commercial IT companies and the government on security issues.

Gibbons represents a rare blend of policeman and IT consultant. “I originally got my degree in photography and police administration. After graduation, I went back to school for an extensive set of programming classes. My focus was always on technology,” he says. His favorite part of consulting comes when he “finds a solution for a client that no one had thought of before.” For example, he helped an English company under attack by the Russian mob by orchestrating a solution involving not only the private sector company but multiple law enforcement agencies in multiple countries.

His least favorite part of consulting is the politics. “I get frustrated when someone has the answer and won’t give it because of some bureaucratic thing. I guess I want to tear down hurdles,” he says.

When he is not tearing down hurdles, his favorite activity is playing multiplayer computer games with his son. He also coaches his son’s soccer team and enjoys hiking and riding a motorcycle.

Gibbons also spends considerable time building tools and systems to fight computer crime. For example, he helped refine the requirements for the FBI’s Trilogy system, for which he received a commendation from the FBI director.