Dr. Stephen Kent

During the last two decades, Dr. Kent’s R&D activities have included the design and development of user authentication and access control systems, network layer encryption and access control systems, secure transport layer protocols secure e-mail technology, and public-key certification authority systems. His most recent work focuses on PKI, security for Internet routing, very high speed IP encryption, and high assurance cryptographic modules.

Dr. Kent served as a member of the Internet Architecture Board (1983-1994), and chaired the Privacy and Security Research Group of the Internet Research Task Force (1985-1998), both now under the auspices of the Internet Society. He chaired the Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) from 1990-1995 and co-chairs the Public Key Infrastructure Working Group (1995-). He is the primary author of the "core" IPsec standards: RFCs 2401, 2402 & 2406 and their successor RFCs, to be published in 2005.

Dr. Kent chaired the committee on Authentication Technologies and Their Privacy Implications, for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National Research Council (2001-2003). He was a member of the CSTB-NRC Information Systems Trustworthiness Committee (1996-98), which produced the "Trust in Cyberspace" report. Other NRC service includes the committee on Rights and Responsibilities of Participants in Networked Communities (1993-94), the Technical Assessment panel for the NIST Computer Systems Laboratory (1990-1992 & 2000-2005), and the Secure Systems Study Committee (1988-1990). The U.S. Secretary of Commerce appointed Dr. Kent as chair of the Federal Advisory Committee to Develop a FIPS for Federal Key Management Infrastructure (1996-98).

Dr. Kent received the B.S. degree in mathematics, summa cum laude, from Loyola University of New Orleans, and the S.M., E.E., and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a Fellow of the ACM and a member of the Internet Society and Sigma Xi.