PGP CEO Blog Archive

Turing Award Recognizes Creators of TCP/IP
09 Sept, 2005

Once a year the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) bestows on one or more computer scientists the Alan Turing Award. The Turing award is given in recognition of "contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community." Last year the winner was Alan Kay. In 2003, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adelman, of RSA fame, shared the award. The award includes a $100,000 grant, so it's a pretty big deal in the computing community.
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- Phil

Time for Congress to Recognize Our Fundamental Right of Personal Data Privacy
24 Aug, 2005

One of the consequences of the data breaches at CardSystems, ChoicePoint, CitiBank, etc. is that Americans are beginning to recognize just how public and vulnerable the details of their personal lives can become. Although most of us assume the details of our financial and commercial transactions are confidential, the reality is exactly the opposite. The paradox of this situation, in my view, is that we live in a nation founded on the recognition of certain “inalienable rights.” At the same time, we enjoy fewer protections against the collection and release of our personal information than any other developed country. To see how the rest of the world has addressed this key issue, I recommend Eric Dash"s excellent story in the August 7 edition of The New York Times (registration required).
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- Phil

CardSystems NOT Just Another Data Breach
17 Aug, 2005

Coming on the heels of similar announcements from Bank of America, CitiBank, and Time-Warner, the disclosure that CardSystems' database of credit card data had been breached seemed like just another in a string of similar announcements. On June 17, CardSystems admitted that confidential information of millions of American Express, Visa, and MasterCard customers had been illegally extracted from its data center in Arizona. The CardSystems loss, however, was fundamentally different in nature from previous announcements and portends a new and dangerous phase in the evolution of cybercrime.
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- Phil

CEO Blog -- Zimmermann’s zFone
08 Aug, 2005

I was really gratified to see the enthusiastic response PGP® inventor and advisor, Phil Zimmermann, received when he announced his latest project at BlackHat last week. Phil"s been working on something called zFone that will do for Voice over IP (VOIP) what the original PGP® software did for email. Many VoIP telephony users apparently do not realize such calls can be vulnerable to attack or eavesdropping. Phil is a legend in the crypto-community and it"s worth paying attention when he decides to devote himself to an endeavor like this one.
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- Phil