Mary Ann Davidson is the

Chief Security Officer A chief security officer (CSO) is an organization's most senior executive accountable for the development and oversight of policies and programs intended for the mitigation and/or reduction of compliance, operational, strategic, financial and re ...

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

Early life

Davidson attended the

Severn School Severn School was founded in 1914 by Roland M. Teel in Severna Park, Maryland, as a preparatory school for the United States Naval Academy. In 2013, Severn School merged with nearby Chesapeake Academy. Currently the school enrolls boys and gi ...

, a preparatory high school for the Naval Academy, graduating in 1976.

Career at Oracle

Davidson joined Oracle in 1988, as a

product manager A product manager (PM) is a professional role that is responsible for the development of products for an organization, known as the practice of product management. Product managers own the product strategy behind a product (physical or digital), ...

in Oracle's financial software business unit.

Security at Oracle

Davidson's involvement in computer security dates to 1993, when she took a position as product marketing manager in Oracle's secure systems business unit. She has served on the Defense Science Board and as a member of the

Center for Strategic and International Studies The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. From its founding in 1962 until 1987, it was an affiliate of Georgetown University, initially named the Center for Strategic and Inte ...

Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency. She has testified about cybersecurity before a number of committees in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate Committee. Davidson has a BSME from the University of Virginia and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She has also served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy Civil Engineer Corps, during which she was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal.

Criticism

In January 2005, Davidson was criticized by

David Litchfield David Litchfield (born 1975) is a British security expert and The Director of Information Security Assurance for Apple. Anne Saita, writing for ''Information Security'' magazine, called him along with his brother Mark Litchfield, "World's Best Bug ...

, who called on Oracle to replace Davidson, pointing to a series of delayed or ineffective security patches in Oracle's database server as evidence of "categorical failure". In August 2015, Davidson published a blog post criticizing engineers who use

static analysis Static analysis, static projection, or static scoring is a simplified analysis wherein the effect of an immediate change to a system is calculated without regard to the longer-term response of the system to that change. If the short-term effect i ...

tools to find and report potential vulnerabilities in Oracle software. Articles about her post soon appeared on technology news sites, where comments were extremely critical of its content and tone. The post was subsequently removed. In December 2015, while Davidson was still Oracle's Chief Security Officer, Oracle agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers about the security provided by updates to its Java Platform, Standard Edition software (Java SE). Under the terms of a proposed consent order, Oracle will be required to give consumers the ability to easily uninstall insecure, older versions of Java SE.

References

External links

Oracle blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davidson, Mary Ann Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Oracle employees Chief security officers University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Wharton School alumni