Dr. Eugene H. Spafford Named to SignaCert Technical Advisory Board
2013 Cyber Security Hall of Fame Inductee and Purdue University Computer Science Professor Leads Expert Team
AUSTIN, TX — July 31, 2014 — SignaCert, the company that is revolutionizing IT operations and security with the “Power of Being Correct”™, today announced the addition of Dr. Eugene Spafford (“Spaf”) to the company’s Technical Advisory Board. Dr. Spafford is one of the most recognized leaders in the field of computing. He is a Professor of Computer Sciences at Purdue University, the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) at Purdue, and is a recent inductee into the Cyber Security Hall of Fame.
Dr. Spafford has been a senior advisor and consultant on issues of security and intelligence, education, and policy to a number of major companies, academic and government agencies, including Microsoft, Intel, Unisys, US Air Force, GAO, FBI, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Justice, the Department of Energy, and the staff of two Presidents of the United States. Earlier in his distinguished career, Dr. Spafford and Gene Kim developed Tripwire, the first free intrusion detection system distributed on the Internet. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Spafford designed a prototype whitelisting system that eventually evolved into the current SignaCert offering.
SignaCert’s Technical Advisory Board is chartered to accelerate the company’s market-leading technological advancements and product innovation. Leveraging the vast experience of experts such as Dr. Spafford, the board provides advice and guidance to support SignaCert’s growth and market strategies.
“We are honored to have a luminary like Dr. Spafford join our Technical Advisory Board,” said Toney Jennings, chief executive officer for SignaCert. “Dr. Spafford’s extensive security and computing expertise, as well as his history with this area of practice, will help us achieve our mission to secure critical systems and move organizations from annual to continuous compliance.”
IT complexity, scale, and rate of change make it extremely difficult to understand the true state of IT infrastructure at any point in time. Powered by patented technology such as the Global Trust Repository (GTR), a file and application whitelist database of unprecedented breadth and depth, SignaCert Integrity continuously compares IT elements against authenticated applications, gold images, and trusted standards. This ongoing appraisal allows for early surgical identification of issues that threaten infrastructure integrity (availability, security, compliance) and reduces the amount of unplanned work typically caused by delayed problem discovery.
“I believe SignaCert’s whitelist-driven approach can enable a movement away from outdated change detection technologies to more intuitive and actionable solutions that verify system correctness,” said Dr. Spafford. “I am excited to help the company drive this revolution, and to bring organizations the security and cost benefits that result.”