In June, Kenneth Rowe joined NCSA's Computing and Communications Group as security coordinator, a newly created position in which he will coordinate staff from several NCSA groups involved in security. His arrival punctuates the Center's commitment to strengthening electronic data security and privacy.
Security has been a critical issue since NCSA opened its doors. Its role has expanded greatly, largely due to the explosive growth of the Internet.
"Clearly the system at NCSA is already good, but my goal will be to expand and improve it," says Rowe. "The tools available to crackers are becoming more sophisticated and powerful, too."
During the past year, NCSA's original emphasis on protecting data and transmissions for users of its supercomputers was expanded into developing similar protections-particularly for privacy of transmission-for NCSA Mosaic and users of the World Wide Web. As with the other NSF supercomputing centers, NCSA is in the delicate position of making its computer resources available to researchers worldwide while safeguarding against those with mischievous or malevolent intent.
Rowe comes to NCSA from the National Security Agency, where he was a senior computer scientist in its Information Systems Security organization. He received a B.S. degree in mathematics from Illinois State University in 1981 and an M.S. degree in computer science at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County in 1991. He is currently completing his Ph.D. dissertation, also in computer science, at Maryland. He has been involved in the U.S. Department of Defense's Software Reuse Initiative, the Ada9X Government Advisory Group, and the Security Engineering Capability Maturity Model effort.
