The inaugural class is meant to collectively sum up the roots of cybersecurity, going all the way back to 1982. Honorees will be featured on the National Cyber Security Timeline with their respective historical milestone.
More than 200 nominations were received, but the board of advisors for the Hall of Fame named just 11 as inaugural inductees to the 2012 Hall of Fame. They range from Dorothy Denning, professor at the Naval Postgraduate School for Department of Defense Analysis, who was president of the International Association of Cryptologic Research, to Carl Landwehr, a professor and the editor-in-chief at IEEE Security & Privacy Magazine, who led cybersecurity programs at the National Science Foundation from 2001–2004 and 2009–2011. Peter Neumann, PhD and principal scientist at SRI International, helped pioneer the SRI Hierarchical Development Methodology. Roger Schell, president at ÆSec, co-founded Gemini Computers and wrote security software for several pieces of Novell network software.
There are also two groups of inventors: Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman and Ralph Merkle, inventors of the public key cryptograph; and Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adelman, inventors of the RSA algorithm.
Also, federal information systems security pioneer F. Lynn McNulty, the State Department’s very first director of information security, was named posthumously.
"Working in areas of technology, public policy, business, education and public awareness, the honorees represent the innovators and visionaries who defined an industry and established the standards in information assurance,” said Mike Jacobs, chairman of the Hall of Fame and the first information assurance director for the US National Security Agency (NSA). “These pioneers paved the way for people everywhere to have the ability to securely utilize digital technologies for work, banking, recreation and communication."
Nominations were ranked and reviewed by the board of directors for the organization, using established criteria in five categories: technology; policy; public awareness, education and business.
The inauguration gala is scheduled for Oct. 17 during a banquet at the Four Seasons Hotel Baltimore – right in the middle of Cyber Security Awareness Month. General Keith Alexander, commander of the US Cyber Command, director of the NSA and chief of the Central Security Service, will be the keynote speaker.