About

Russ Housley formed Vigil Security, LLC in September 2002 with the goal of helping customers design and implement diligently watchful security solutions.

Russ Housley has worked in the computer and network security field since 1982. Before starting Vigil Security, Russ worked at the Air Force Data Services Center (AFDSC), Xerox Special Information Systems (XSIS), SPYRUS, and RSA Laboratories. His security research and standards interests include security protocols, certificate management, cryptographic key distribution, and high assurance design and development practices. He has been active in many security standards organizations; his recent focus has been on the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

From March 2003 to March 2007, Russ served as the one of the IETF Security Area Directors. In this position, I was able to help improve the security of the Internet by helping many different working groups achieve their security objectives, but I had less time to contribute to individual standards.

From March 2007 to March 2013, Russ served as IETF Chair. In this position, Russ was able to help many different working groups throughout the IETF, and Russ was able to support incremental improvement of the IETF standards development process.

From March 2007 to March 2017, Russ served as a member of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). In this position, Russ was able to provide architectural oversight for Internet protocols and procedures, provides liaison support on behalf of the IETF, review appeals of the Internet standards process, provide oversight of the RFC series and protocol parameter value assignment by IANA, and provide technical advice to the Internet Society. From March 2013 to March 2015, Russ served as chair of the IAB.

From May 2013 to March 2017, Russ served on the Internet Research Steering Group (IRSG) as an at-large member.

In November 2004, Russ was recognized by the IEEE 802.11 working group for his contributions to IEEE 802.11i-2004, which fixes the severe security shortcoming of the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). Russ was previously recognized by the IEEE 802.10 working group for contributions to the Standard for Interoperable LAN/MAN Security (SILS).

Russ provided major contributions to several security protocols, including the Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS), Internet PKI using X.509 (PKIX), SDNS Security Protocol 4 (SP4), SDNS Message Security Protocol (MSP), IEEE 802.10b Secure Data Exchange (SDE) Protocol, and IEEE 802.10c Key Management Protocol.

Russ received his B.S. in computer science from Virginia Tech in 1982, and he received his M.S. in computer science from George Mason University in 1992. He has written two books, detailed on the Books page.