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Mar. 7, 2005 Volume 29, Issue 27 |
National computer security expert to speak
A nationally recognized authority on computer security and electronic commerce will discuss “Information Policy Issues in the Post-Attack Age” during a March 8 public program at Mississippi State.
Dr. Lance J. Hoffman, who established and led to prominence the computer security program at George Washington University, will begin his presentation at 9:30 a.m. in 100 Butler Hall, home of the Computer Science and Engineering Department.
He is visiting campus as a special guest of the Center for Computer Security Research, which is a unit of the department. In February, Hoffman was named to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.
The author or editor of five books and numerous articles on computer security and privacy, Hoffman currently serves as GWU’s Distinguished Research Professor of Computer Science. He founded what now is that university’s Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute.
“Dr. Hoffman’s first book in 1973 was used in what may have been the first university course entirely devoted to computer security—a class he initiated at the University of California-Berkeley,” said Dr. Ray Vaughn, director of the MSU center.
“His teaching innovations three decades later include multidisciplinary courses on electronic commerce and network security, and the development of a portable educational network for teaching computer security,” Vaughn added.
Under Hoffman’s leadership, the GWU program gained national recognition as a Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education. He also directs the U.S. Defense Department and National Science Foundation computer security scholarship programs at the Washington, D.C.-based institution of higher learning. Additionally, he heads research efforts there in capacity building and computer security curriculum development.
A Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, Hoffman has served on a number of advisory committees—including those of the Center for Democracy and Technology, IBM, Federal Trade Commission, and ACM Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy. He occasionally testifies before Congress on security and privacy-related issues.
Hoffman received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University before completing master’s and doctoral degrees from Stanford University, both in computer science.