Security and Privacy Awards Banquet May 17, 2010, Berkeley, California, by Hilarie Orman

Review of the
Security and Privacy Awards Banquet,
Berkeley, California
May 17, 2010

Review by Hilarie Orman
May 26, 2010

The Security and Privacy Symposium is always held in May at the Claremont Resort, always Sunday through Wednesday, and Monday evening is always the time for a reception with generous quantities of appetizers. But 2010 was the 30th anniversary of the symposium, and Monday evening was something completely different.

The Pauley Ballroom on the University of California at Berkeley campus was the site for an evening of socializing, food, and entertainment. About 360 people dined, applauded, and laughed their way through the program. Pioneers in the field through first-time attendees mingled and met one another.

The evening's Master of Ceremonies was Peter G. Neumann, and he set an elegant tone in his tuxedo. He first introduced Tim Grance of the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST), who presented the prestigious Computer System Security Award to Jerome Salzer, a pioneer in secure systems who was a major developer of the Multics operating system. The award is granted annually to recognize "outstanding contributions towards the advancement of computer security technology."

Several previous recipients of the NIST award were present, including Roger Schell, Dorothy Denning, Peter Neumann, Virgil Gligor, and Michael Schroeder.

Neumann then extolled the contributions of Carl Landwehr of the National Science Foundation and presented him with the IEEE Computer Society's award for Distinguished Service "for excellent service in government organizations responsible for funding important research and incentives, and for his numerous roles in the IEEE Computer Society's Technical Committee on Security and Privacy, the Security and Privacy Symposium, the Cipher Newsletter, the IEEE Security and Privacy Magazine."

Douglas Maughan of Homeland Security was honored with the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Security and Privacy's award for Distinguished Community Service "for his many years of excellent service in government organizations responsible for funding important research, incentives, development, system evaluations, and technology transfer, for activities with the INFOSEC Security Council, and for producing an outstanding roadmap for future security research."

John Markoff of the New York Times also received the Distinguished Community Service Award "for his superbly computer-literate and educationally valuable journalism, bringing the topics of computer security and privacy clearly into the public eye with his incisive and thoughtful writing throughout most of the Security and Privacy Symposium’s 31 years, with frequent newspaper articles, books, and occasional media appearances."

Tom Berson, another early organizer, entrepreneur, and loyal supporter of the Symposium, was also honored with a Distinguished Community Service Award.

Terry Benzel was recognized with an IEEE Computer Society award for Continuing Service. She has served in almost every possible Symposium and Technical Committee position, adding her enthusiasm and vision to make the symposium a vital and browing event.

George Davida, one of the original Symposium organizers was present, and he received one of the special recognition awards: a small box of exquisite chocolate candies. Dick Kemmerer and Jon Millen, both early organizers, received recognition and chocolates from Neumann.

Neumann continued with recognition for the many people who contributed to the Symposium with published papers or who served as organizers and also served in Federal government roles.

Noted and missed were several people who were deceased, including Jim Anderson, Joseph Goguen, Ted Linden, Roger Needham, Dan Schackenberg, Rein Turn, and several others.

Li Gong of Mozilla got several mentions for his research, business successes, and geographic mobility.

Neumann mentioned several authors and their papers that have had significant impact on other researchers: Kemmerer (storage/timing channels); Abadi-Needham (practical aspects of crypto); Blaze-Feigenbaum-Lacy (decentralized trust management); Dean-Felten-Wallach (Java security); Wagner-Dean (static analysis); Song-Wagner-Perrig (search on encrypted data); Clark-Wilson and Goguen-Meseguer.

More chocolates were due to some of the most prolific authors over the years, notably Sushil Jajodia (not present), Adrian Perrig, Dawn Song, Mike Reiter, Jon Millen, Virgil Gligor, Teresa Lunt (not present), Dorothy Denning, Cathy Meadows (not present).

The awards committee consisted of Peter Neumann, Matt Bishop, Marv Schaefer, and Sean Peisert. The trio authored a special paper ("Reflections") for the Symposium proceedings, as did Carl Landwehr and Douglas Maughan.

Ulf Lindqvist and Jenny McNeill of SRI International were instrumental in facilitating the coordination of the awards dinner, which was a two-year project planned by the Technical Committee on Security and Privacy.

Hilarie Orman ended the awards presentation by giving a surprise present to Peter Neumann in thanks for his generous work on the awards committee and for being the evening's host. He received a woven blanket with the Symposium's logo, a Trojan Horse. The gift was dubbed "the 30th anniversary commemorative Privacy and Security Blanket."

A list of all Technical Committee awards is at http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/Awards.html

Awards at the Security and Privacy Banquet, May 17, 2010
Peter G. Neumann and George Davida	Jerry Salzer and Tim Grance	Carl Landwehr and Peter G. Neumann	W. Douglas Maughan and Peter G. Neumann
Tom Berson and Peter G. Neumann	John Markoff and Peter G. Neumann	Terry Benzel and Hilarie Orman	Hilarie Orman, Sven Dietrich, Peter G. Neumann, Terry Benzel, and the Privacy and Security Blanket (photo by Carl Landwehr)