Russ Housley is an expert in security protocols, system engineering and system security architectures, and he has authored many Internet standards. He has over 30 years of communications and computer security experience, and he is the Founder of Vigil Security, LLC. He served as Chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) from 2007 to 2013, and as Chair of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) from 2013 to 2015. He was an IETF Security Area Director from 2003 to 2007, and has also served in leadership positions of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), including the IEEE 802 Executive Committee in the early 1990s.
Russ has authored several Internet security standards, including the Cryptographic Message Syntax, which provides the foundation for electronic mail security, and the Internet X.509 Certificate Profile, which provides the infrastructure to identify websites and users. In the IEEE, he made significant technical contributions Local Area Network security standards, particularly IEEE 802.10 and IEEE 802.11i, which is implemented as Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA and WPA2). He is coauthor of two technical books: Planning for PKI and Implementing Email and Security Tokens.
Russ received his B.Sc. in computer science from Virginia Tech in 1982, and he received his M.Sc. in computer science from George Mason University in 1992.
Planning for PKI: Best Practices Guide for Deploying Public Key Infrastructure