Ranum helped design and implement
Digital Equipment Corporation's Secure External Access Link (SEAL) (later
AltaVista firewall), regarded as the first commercial bastion host firewall, in 1990. He left DEC to work for
Trusted Information Systems (TIS) as chief scientist and development manager for Internet security products. It was at TIS that Ranum became responsible for the whitehouse.gov Internet email site. Once charged with that responsibility, Ranum advocated that the
whitehouse.com domain be registered as well. Despite his advice, it was not registered by the government, but was later registered for an
adult entertainment provider. At TIS, he developed the TIS Internet Firewall Toolkit (fwtk) under a grant from
DARPA. After TIS, he worked for V-One as chief scientist, and was extensively involved in that company's
IPO. Three months after that IPO, Ranum formed his own company, Network Flight Recorder (NFR), and served as
CEO for three years before stepping into a
CTO role. Ranum later left NFR to consult for TruSecure. In 2004, he became the
chief security officer of
Tenable, Inc. In addition to his various full-time positions, Ranum has also held board or advisory positions at NFR Security, Protego Networks, and
Fortify Software.
Public presentations Ranum has spoken to
USENIX audiences at LISA 1997, 1999 (tutorial) LISA 2000 (keynote), 2002, and 2003 (tutorial). He spoke out against full disclosure at the Black Hat Security Briefings in 2000. More recently, Ranum has spoken at Interop in 2005 and 2007, CanSecWest in 2010, and Secure360 in 2011. He previously taught courses for the
SANS Institute.
Influence Ranum's work has been cited in at least 15 published
U.S. patents, as well as numerous other computer and network security articles and books.
Ranum's law Ranum is cited as the author of an
eponymous law, "You can't solve social problems with software."
Awards • TISC "clue" award, 2000. • Inducted into the
ISSA hall of fame, 2000 or 2001. • Techno-Security Professional of the Year, 2005. ==Publications==