RSA Conference 2015 announces recipients of 18th annual awards for excellence in information security, public policy, and mathematics

RSA Conference, the world’s leading information security conferences and expositions taking place this week in San Francisco, CA, announced on April 21 the recipients of its 18^th annual awards program, including the Lifetime Achievement Award and the awards for Excellence in the Fields of Information Security, Mathematics and Public Policy.

The recipients of this year’s RSA Conference Awards are:

Lifetime Achievement: Richard Clarke

This year’s award goes to Richard Clarke, CEO of Good Harbor Security Risk Management, which advises companies and governments on cyber security.

He served for thirty years in the United States Government, including an unprecedented ten continuous years as a White House official, serving three consecutive Presidents. In the White House he was Special Assistant to the President for Global Affairs, Special Advisor to the President for Cyberspace, and National Coordinator for Security and Counter-terrorism.

Prior to his White House years, he served as a diplomat, including as Assistant Secretary of State and held other positions in the State Department and the Pentagon for twenty years.

Since leaving government in 2003, Mr. Clarke has served as an on-air consultant for ABC News for ten years, taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government for five years, and written six books, both fiction and non-fiction, including the national number one best seller Against All Enemies and Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It. His newest Novel, Sting of the Drone, was released on 13 May 2014.

In addition to his work at Good Harbor, he served or currently serves in several advisory or board capacities: Member, President Obama’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology (NSA review group); Co-Chairman, Virginia Cyber Security Commission; Member, New York Governor Cuomo’s Cyber Security Advisory Board; Senior Advisor on Cyber-Security and Counter-terrorism to the CEO of SRA International; Chairman of the Board of Governors, Middle East Institute; Member, Board of Directors of Veracode; Member, Board of Directors of Bit9; and, Member, Board of Directors of Nok Nok Labs.

Excellence in the Field of Information Security: John Stewart

This year’s award recipient, John Stewart, Senior Vice President and Chief Security and Trust Officer, Cisco is being recognized for his work driving security excellence across Cisco, and helping elevate awareness across the industry of the importance of trust, accountability and transparency from IT vendors. John’s responsibilities at Cisco include ensuring information security and the metrics that encourage continued process and solutions improvement, trustworthy systems development, supply chain security, cloud security, customer data protection and transparent validation about Cisco’s cyber security practices.

Throughout his 25-year career, Stewart has led or participated in security initiatives ranging from elementary school IT design to national security programs. In addition to his role at Cisco, he currently sits on numerous technical advisory boards and the National Cyber-Forensics Training Alliance (NCFTA). Additionally, Stewart serves on the council of experts for the Global Cyber Security Center and the cybersecurity think tank at University of Maryland University College. He served on the Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency.

Excellence in the Field of Mathematics: Dr. Hugo Krawczyk and Professor Ivan Bjerre Damgård

The recipients of this award have both contributed to numerous central cryptographic mechanisms, such as multi-party computations, authentication and key exchange protocols and models, threshold cryptography, zero-knowledge, and pseudo-randomness. In particular, they have conducted basic early studies regarding the theoretical underpinning and practical aspects of cryptographic hash functions.

Specifically, Professor Damgård devised the basic Merkle-Damgård principle for designing hash functions (Crypto 89), and defined the notion of collision-free (also known as collision-resistant) hash functions (Eurocrypt 87). He was also a co-author of the first completeness results for information theoretically secure multiparty computation (STOC 88). Dr. Hugo Krawczyk contributed the LFSR-based hash (Crypto 94), the MMH universal hash-based crypto-hash (FSE 97), the notion of Chameleon hash (NDSS 2000) and the co-invention of the celebrated and widely used hash-based MAC (HMAC) (Crypto 96).

Excellence in the Field of Public Policy: J. Michael Daniel

This year’s award winner is a public servant who is currently the special assistant to the president and the cybersecurity coordinator leading the interagency development of national cybersecurity strategy and policy and overseeing agencies’ implementation of those policies. Daniel also ensures that the federal government is effectively partnering with the private sector, non-governmental organizations, other branches and levels of government, and other nations.

Prior to his work on national security, Daniel served for 17 years with the Office of Management and Budget. From September 2001 to June 2012, he served as the chief of the intelligence branch, national security division, which oversees the intelligence community and other classified U.S. Department of Defense programs. Daniel played a key role in shaping intelligence budgets, improving the management of the intelligence community and resolving major policy issues. He also worked on a variety of cross-cutting issues including cybersecurity, counterterrorism spending, and information sharing and safeguarding.

“The RSA Conference awards program seeks to recognize strong leaders in information security and this year is no exception, as all of our recipients have proven to push the industry forward,” said Sandra Toms, vice president and curator of RSA Conference. “We’re honored to add this year’s recipients to our list of past winners and look forward to what they do next.”

Source: RSA Conference USA 2015