Biography
Byron Acohido is a native of the 50th state of Hawaii and currently covers technology topics for USA TODAY. While at the Seattle Times earlier in his career, he was awarded the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting and 11 other national awards for stories linking a dangerous defect in the rudder controls of Boeing 737 jetliners to a string of crashes that killed hundreds of people.
Since joining USA TODAY in December 2000, Acohido has led the newspaper’s cutting-edge coverage of cybersecurity and privacy. He led a team of reporters awarded the 2011 NYSSCPA Excellence in Financial Journalism Award for “How China Does Business,” an examination of hacking and politics that led to Google pulling out of Beijing. In 2010, The SANS Institute named Acohido among the nation’s Top Technology and Cyber Security Journalists Byron Acohido for newspaper and online coverage of identity theft and privacy.
  Acohido co-authored Zero Day Threat: The Shocking Truth of How Banks And Credit Bureaus Help Cyber Crooks Steal Your Money and Identity, which was awarded the 2009 Excellence in Financial Journalism Award for general audience books from the New York State Society of Certified Public Accounts. NYSSCPA also awarded he and Swartz the 2008 Excellence in Financial Journalism Awards for their newspaper stories about data theft and identity fraud. The Society of American Business Editors and Writers awarded Acohido and Swartz the 2005 Best in Business Award for Projects by large newspapers; and they were named finalists for the prestigious 2005 and 2006 Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism.
As an author, analyst, instructor and public speaker, Acohido is dedicated to fostering fresh thinking and productive discussions about cybersecurity and personal privacy.