(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Certificate authority and Internet security provider Comodo (www.comodo.com) has announced a key addition to its management team with the addition of Phillip Hallam-Baker as vice president and principal scientist to spearhead Web security and software development in the Americas.
According to Comodo’s Wednesday announcement, Hallam-Baker brings 18 years experience in Web security, with the past 12 years spent as principal scientist at VeriSign (www.verisign.com).
Hallam-Baker earned his doctorate in nuclear physics from the University of Oxford and his bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering from the University of Southampton in England.
His storied career in Web security began in 1992, when he worked at particle physics lab CERN with the world-renowned Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with inventing the World Wide Web. He was later a research scientist at MIT Laboratory for Computer Science where he had responsibility for Security and Payments issues in the newly founded World Wide Web Consortium and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory where he performed seminal work on securing high profile Federal Government Internet sites.
“The experience that Phillip brings to Comodo is invaluable,” Comodo chief executive officer and chief security architect Melih Abdulhayoglu said in a statement. “He is already proving to be a significant addition to our team and will be a key innovator and executor as we continue to grow our existing customer business and expand into new markets and channels for distribution.”
While at VeriSign, Hallam-Baker served as principal scientist, where he played an important role in product development and training. He was a key technical contributor on numerous patents and a co-inventor of protocols. He was also recognized for his industry leadership standards.
He brings to Comodo extensive knowledge of computer systems architecture at all levels from design, assembly language and high-level programming languages to platform and application architecture.
“Watching the company as a competitor in my previous position, I recognized Comodo as the industry rising star,” Hallam-Baker said. “Since I began working on the Web at CERN in 1993, I have believed that the key to unlocking the full potential of the World Wide Web is to give people the confidence that they can use it securely. That is the vision that I knew Melih Abdulhayoglu and the executive team and engineering staff of Comodo shared which is why we were able to work together as competitors to carry Extended Validation Certificates from a hope to an industry standard. Going forward, it is clear that the challenge of securing the Internet has never been greater and never more important.”
VeriSign has been going through some dramatic changes over the past few years to refocus on its growing core business. Last year, the company announced it was selling its communications services group for $230M to data communications and interoperability solutions provider TNS (www.tnsi.com). And it was announced in May that VeriSign would sell its identity and authentication business to Symantec (www.symantec.com) for around $1.3 billion, a sale which was completed this week.
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