The Sanctum Sanctorum

Home of Mike Scher, your Mystic Chef and Guru


I am an attorney, licensed to practice in Illinois and New Hampshire. I concentrate in commercial, and contract law. I am also an on-leave graduate student in Socio-Cultural Anthropology at the University of Chicago slowly making my way along the arduous process of writing up my dissertation. Not surprisingly, my research interests are in Legal Anthropology, the study of how people interact with abstract institutions and the people who make them "real." My research focus is on the law and the phenomenon (and representations and popular conceptions about the phenomenon) of unauthorized accesses to computer and communication systems when no profit motive is involved. People have a lot of other names for it.

Presently, I am general counsel for Nexum, an IT security VAR with a serious no-nonsense attitude. Nexum's big differentiator is its emphasis on smart architecture as a security cornerstone -- not just tossing products at problems. With compliance and risk management in mind, my role there should be pretty obvious (for clients and for Nexum itself).

Much of that came to be in Chicago, the city I have come to love and which regularly disappoints. When it's not wracked with fits of corruption, it's a wonderful place. If you watch the news much, you'll have an idea how much corruption goes on. I now live in New Hampshire, where I moved for a major change of lifestyle and to refresh my Yankee sense of propriety and liberty.


Way back, when the Web was young and the IP packets were still shiny, I also began the Network/Computer Security Technology Index which is now long out of date, and includes headlines and various categorized links, FAQs, and informational files on security.

Personal Information -- Who am I?

Papers, Talks and Lectures -- What have I said in public?

Obligatory Cool Links -- Where should you go next?


strange@cultural.com