Dr Whitfield Diffie

Chief Security Officer
Sun Microsystems Inc.

Whitfield Diffie, Chief Security Officer of Sun Microsystems, is Vice President and Sun Fellow
and has been at Sun since 1991. As Chief Security Officer, Diffie is the chief exponent of Sun's
security vision and responsible for developing Sun's strategy to achieve that vision.

Diffie is best known for his 1975 discovery of the concept of public key cryptography, for
which he was awarded a Doctorate in Technical Sciences (Honoris Causa) by the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology in 1992.

For a dozen years prior to joining Sun, Diffie was Manager of Secure Systems Research for
Northern Telecom, functioning as the center of expertise in advanced security technologies
throughout the corporation. Among his achievements in this position was the design of the key
management architecture for NT's PDSO security system for X.25 packet networks.

Diffie received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in 1965. He holds two Doctorates. Prior to becoming interested in cryptography, he
worked on the development of the Mathlab symbolic manipulation system --- sponsored jointly
at Mitre and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory --- and later on proof of correctness of
computer programs at Stanford University.

Since 1993, Diffie has worked largely in public policy, in the area of cryptography. He has
testified twice to the House and twice to the Senate. His position --- in opposition to limitations
on the business and personal use of cryptography --- has been the subject of articles in the New
York Times Magazine, Wired, Omini, and Discover. The subject has also been covered on the
Discovery Channel, Equinox TV in Britain, and the Japanese TV network NHK.

Notariety has provoked a number of awards, including: IEEE Information Theory Society Best
Paper Award for 1979, IEEE Donald E. Fink award for 1981, the 1994 Pioneer Award, given by
The Electronic Frontiers Foundation for contribution to the quality of life in cyberspace, the
1996 National Computer Systems Security Award given jointly by NIST and NSA, the 1997
Louis E. Levy Medal from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, the First ACM Paris Kanellakis
Award for contribution to theory and practice in computer science, the IEEE Information Society
Golden Jubilee Award for invention of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol.

Diffie is the co-author with Prof. Susan Landau of the University of Massachusetts of the book
Privacy on the Line: The politics of wiretapping and encryption, which has won the Donald
McGannon Award for Social and Ethical Relevance in Communications Policy Research and the
IEEE-USA award for Distinguished Literary Contributions Furthering Public Understanding of
the Profession.