| My birth certificate says California, but I grew up in Washington,
D.C. My desire to work in computer security is partly driven by my
respect for the great engineers and great projects of the past.
Bell Telephone built their systems for 99.999% reliability; they
built a dependable phone system, and people were rarely let down.
Currently, it's very difficult to build a 99.999% dependable computer
system, mostly due to low software quality, and as a result, lots
of people are let down by computers every day. I am motivated by
the challenge to build computer systems (programs, protocols,
architectures, etc.) that people can depend on.
Having worked for years as a UNIX system administrator, I have
experienced conflict between the goals of convenience, performance,
reliability, efficiency, economy, maintainability, flexibility, and
controllability. Take, for example, the deployment of a wireless
network in an office building. There are many ways it can be set
up, but every possible scheme involves compromising at least one
of the goals. My interest in computer security is in coming up with
ideas that help achieve more of our system design goals simultaneously.
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