Jeff Hudson - CEO Venafi Digital Certificate Management & Encryption Key Management

Jeff Hudson joins Dave & Bill today and will be covering many key elements about Digital Certificate Management & Encryption Key Management...

 

A key executive in four successful, high-technology start-ups that have gone public, Hudson brings over 25 years of experience in information technology and security management. Hudson has spent a significant portion of his career developing and delivering leading edge technology solutions for financial services and other Global 2000 companies.

 

Prior to joining Venafi, Hudson was the CEO of Vhayu Technologies Corp. Vhayu was the market leader for the analysis and capture of market data, and was acquired by ThomsonReuters. Prior to joining Vhayu, Hudson held numerous executive leadership posts, including CEO and cofounder of MS2, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Informix Software, CEO of Visioneer, and numerous senior executive posts at NetFRAME Systems and WYSE Technology. He started his career with IBM.

 

Mr. Hudson earned a B.A. in communications at the University of California, Davis.

 

1. Stolen digital certificates played a key role in the Stuxnet attacks on the Iranian nuclear power plant and the federal government is now considering using digital certificates as part of its National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) (http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/01/07/national-program-office-enhancing-online-trust-and-privacy).

 

2. Digital certificate management and security is a huge problem with enterprises. In a recent interview about his Stuxnet presentation at Black Hat DC, Securion head researcher Tom Parker said: "It isn't really that hard to do," he says. The use of stolen digital signatures to sign the device drivers wasn't such a big coup, he says. "These are semiconductor companies, not security companies," he says. "It's not so tough to target and steal their certificates.”