Cyber Security Hall of Fame Honors MIT Alumni

Three of the five most recently selected members of the National Cyber Security Hall of Fame, founded in 2012 to honor pioneers in the field, are MIT alumni.

Jerome H. Saltzer ’61, SM ’63, ScD ’66, a professor of computer science emeritus at MIT, got involved in cyber security with the discovery in 1964 that it was surprisingly easy to break into the MIT Compatible Time-Sharing System.

He helped design the security aspects of the Multics time-sharing system and he led the development of a security kernel for Multics. Later he led the development of the Kerberos single-login authentication system.

Susan Landau PhD ’83 has been a 20-year leader in the so-called Crypto Wars. Through her writing, testimony in Congress, and technical and policy research, she has helped ensure the widespread availability of strong encryption.

A strong advocate for women in computer science, Landau is a professor of cybersecurity policy in the Department of Social Science and Policy Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Previously she served as a senior staff privacy analyst at Google and a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems.

Steven B. Lipner ’65, SM ’66 recently retired as the partner director of software security in trustworthy computing security at Microsoft and serves as a board member and chair of SAFECode. He led Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle team.

Lipner is named as an inventor on 12 U.S. patents with two pending applications in the field of computer and network security. Read a WGBH Frontline interview with Lipner that probes Microsoft security issues.