The RSA Conference 2024 has awarded its Lifetime Achievement Award to Michael Brown, Rear Admiral, US Navy (Ret.), and its Award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics to Craig Gentry, CTO at TripleBlind, and Oded Regev, Silver Professor at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Brown is recognized for his significant contributions to cybersecurity, while Gentry and Regev are honored for their pioneering work in cryptography and encryption. The awards highlight the recipients’ dedication to their fields and their impact on the cybersecurity industry. The International Association for Cryptologic Research co-sponsored the Mathematics Award.
RSA Conference 2024: Recognizing Excellence in Cybersecurity and Mathematics
The RSA Conference, a prominent series of global events for the cybersecurity community, recently announced the recipients of its 2024 annual awards. The Lifetime Achievement Award was bestowed upon Michael Brown, Rear Admiral, US Navy (Ret.), while the Award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics was jointly awarded to Craig Gentry, Chief Technology Officer at TripleBlind, and Oded Regev, Silver Professor in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University. The International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) co-sponsored the Mathematics Award for the third consecutive year.
Lifetime Achievement Award: Honoring Michael Brown
The Lifetime Achievement Award is designed to honor leaders who have made significant contributions to the advancement of the cybersecurity industry throughout their careers. This year, the award was given to Michael Brown, who has had a distinguished career in the US Navy and the cybersecurity industry.
Brown joined the Navy in 1976 and held significant leadership positions within the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, specializing in intelligence and information operations. He played a crucial role in expanding the Navy’s operational role in cyberspace. After leaving the Navy, Brown joined RSA Security as the President of its Federal Division and collaborated with RSA Conference, fostering partnerships with governments worldwide. Currently, he is the Founder and President of Spinnaker Security, a consulting business focused on understanding, identifying, and mitigating business risks associated with cybersecurity.
Excellence in the Field of Mathematics: Celebrating Craig Gentry and Oded Regev
The RSA Conference Award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics recognizes individuals or organizations whose work in cryptography and mathematics contributes to the advancement of the cybersecurity industry. This year, the award was jointly given to Craig Gentry and Oded Regev for their significant contributions to lattice-based cryptography.
Gentry, in 2009, proposed the first Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) as part of his PhD thesis. His encryption scheme allows general computations over encrypted inputs to produce an encrypted output, a concept proposed in 1978 but only partially realized until Gentry’s solution. Gentry has also contributed to designing advanced generations of FHE with improved efficiency.
Regev, on the other hand, invented ‘Learning with Errors’ (LWE) in 2005, a problem used as a hardness assumption to create public-key cryptosystems. His encryption method has been further developed and heavily employed by others, providing alternative schemes that are not known to be broken by polynomial time quantum computing algorithms.
RSA Conference: A Platform for Cybersecurity Discussions
The RSA Conference serves as a platform where the cybersecurity industry converges to discuss current and future concerns. It provides access to experts, unbiased content, and ideas that help individuals and companies advance their cybersecurity posture and build stronger, smarter teams. The conference brings the cybersecurity industry together and empowers the collective to stand against cyber threats worldwide.
About the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR)
The International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the science of cryptology. Cryptology, the science of creating and breaking encryption algorithms, has broad applications in the modern world, including banking, mobile phone use, and even opening car doors. IACR organizes a series of conferences and workshops, publishes the Journal of Cryptology, and maintains the Cryptology ePrint Archive, an online repository of cryptologic research papers aimed at providing rapid dissemination of results.
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