RSA® Conference 2008 Awards

Excellence in the Field of Mathematics

Arjen Lenstra

Professor, Laboratory for cryptologic algorithms, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Prof. Arjen Lenstra has made fundamental contributions to the design of integer factoring techniques, most notably the Number Field Sieve. He has been equally involved in the application of these tools, and a participant in a number of landmark factorizations of RSA moduli, such as RSA-155 (a 512-bit public key). Prof. Lenstra’s work has been essential to the computer security industry’s understanding of the strength of cryptographic systems, and instrumental in the selection and standardization of strong RSA key sizes.

Excellence in the Field of Public Policy

Congressman Jim Langevin

Rhode Island’s 2nd Congressional District

Congressman Langevin. a Democrat from Rhode Island, is the Chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity and Science & Technology. No Subcommittee or Committee was more active on cyber security in 2007 than Congressman Langevin’s.  He held more hearings on the issue than any other Member of Congress has done in a single year and forced the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Government to spend more time understanding their information security risks and to come up with more effective strategies and plans to mitigate them. He has helped elevate the issue as a top priority in the Homeland Security Committee and in the Administration.

Excellence in the Field of Security Practices

Philip Venables

Managing Director and Chief Information Risk Officer, Goldman, Sachs & Co., USA

As managing director and chief information risk officer at Goldman Sachs & Co., Philip Venables surely has multiple pioneering projects in progress simultaneously.  One that stands out from the rest, however, started back in 2001 with a vision of how to change information security from a physical to a logical endeavor by shifting its focus to the data itself. Since then, he has been directly involved with shaping how Goldman Sachs handles, protects and controls sensitive information.

He launched a full-on data protection, auditing and compliance initiative at Goldman Sachs where he has deployed enterprise rights management (Liquid Machines) as a core strategy for information protection, the goal of which is to control who at Goldman has access to certain critical documents and to monitor and prevent unauthorized attempts to manipulate protected data.  Phil's vision expanded the firm's information protection strategy to ensure that it would travel with the information itself, not just be applied to the containers of information.

As a result of Venables' dedication and conviction in the power of persistent security, Goldman's security infrastructure continues to be cutting-edge.  Phil has served as a visionary for both Goldman and Liquid Machines, stretching and pushing the limits of what is possible by thinking about information protection from a unique perspective that helped his own organization protect its most important digital assets and influenced Liquid Machines with his innovative ideas.

Lifetime Achievement Award

Thomas E. Noonan

Tom Noonan recently retired as general manager of IBM Internet Security Systems and is the former chairman, president and chief executive officer of Internet Security Systems, which was acquired by IBM in 2006. Tom Noonan and Chris Klaus launched ISS in 1994 to commercialize and develop a premier network security management company. Under Noonan’s leadership, ISS revenue soared from a startup in 1994 to nearly $330 million dollars in its first decade with more than 1,200 employees and operations in more than 26 countries.  

But Tom’s accomplishments did not end with his building a leading cyber security company from the ground up. Tom also played a key role in growing the industry. ISS alone was a pioneer in the intrusion detection category of the security industry and Tom through his thought leadership and tireless work as a “spokesperson for cyber security” played a huge role in educating the marketplace and IT security decision makers across the globe, including many government officials and bodies.

Noonan’s management style and vision has been widely recognized by industry-leading publications including Forbes, Business Week and Fortune. In 1999, Ernst and Young recognized him as “Entrepreneur of the Year” and in 2006 Noonan was inducted into the Georgia Technology Hall of Fame. In 2002, President Bush appointed Noonan to serve on the National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC), a homeland defense initiative that is focused on protecting information systems that are critical to the nation's infrastructure.

Tom is also the Chairman of the Georgia Tech College of Computing Advisory Board and advises the College leadership on matters regarding research and education initiatives. Recently, Georgia Tech College of Computing established the Thomas E. Noonan Distinguished Lecture in Information Security series to honor Tom for his many contributions to the College of Computing and to the field of information security.