Posted by    on   Nov 3, 2025

We were very sorry to hear of the passing a few days ago of friend, contributor, and long-time supporter of VB David Harley.

David spent more than 30 years in IT, as a security analyst, systems administrator, author/blogger, researcher, and editor. From 1989 to 2006 he worked in medical informatics, specializing in security and data protection, after which he moved into consultancy, spending several years working closely with ESET as a senior research fellow. In addition, he co-authored and edited several security books, including Viruses Revealed and the AVIEN Malware Defense Guide. 

Over the years, David was a regular and prolific contributor to Virus Bulletin in the form of articles, features, opinion pieces, book reviews, comments and others, and he presented at the Virus Bulletin conference no fewer than 16 times, his last VB conference paper being at VB2017 in Madrid. 

Back in 2007, David looked back over his first 17 years in the AV industry and described his life before AV.

Besides security, David's great passion was music, and he devoted a large part of his leisure time, and later his retirement, to composing music and playing guitar.

Members of the VB team remember David for his warm, kind and gentle nature, and we extend our condolences to all his family and loved ones.