The National Security Agency’s Research Directorate has announced it has selected “Spectre Attacks: Exploiting Speculative Execution” as the winner of its 8th Annual Best Cybersecurity Research Paper competition. Originally published at the 2019 IEEE Security & Privacy Symposium, the winning paper, in combination with Meltdown, another award-winning paper released earlier by the same researchers, launched a global effort to mitigate critical vulnerabilities in processors. 

Meet Ian Thornton-Trump. He is the Chief Information Security Officer at Cyjax, and an ITIL certified IT professional with 25 years of experience in IT security and information technology. As CISO Cyjax, Ian has deep experience with the threats facing small, medium and enterprise businesses. His research and experience have made him a sought-after cybersecurity consultant specializing in cyber threat intelligence programs for small, medium and enterprise organizations. In his spare time, he teaches cybersecurity and IT business courses for CompTIA as part of their global faculty and is the lead architect for Cyber Titan, Canada's efforts to encourage the next generation of cyber professionals.

The year 2020 has been a whirlwind of adaptation and change, prompting the phrase “business as usual” to take on a whole new meaning. The Center for Internet Security, Inc. (CIS) has become a leader in supporting both public and private organizations in the COVID era, when many are shifting more of their workforce remote and more of their workloads to the cloud. 2020 also marks a milestone for the Center for Internet Security, as CIS is celebrating its 20th anniversary this month.

NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum (NCM) is thriving and plans to keep growing as it welcomes a new Director. Dr. Vince Houghton, who brings a deep background in intelligence and history, joined the Agency last month after serving as historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. Dr. Houghton said he already is impressed with the professionalism of the current staff.