ICANN announced this week the hiring of cryptographer Whit Diffie as Vice President for Information Security and Cryptography. The 65-year-old former chief security officer from Sun will use his advanced knowledge to help improve the security of the domain name system.
Diffie is famous for co-writing a paper published in 1976 that has helped scientists better use math to decrypt secret messages. Although it’s hard to say how long the MIT graduate will be hanging around ICANN, I think this addition to the organization’s staff is a very good move. It will go a long ways towards easing fears about Internet security.