Marcus J. Ranum (born November 5, 1962, in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

, United States) is a computer and network security researcher. He is credited with a number of innovations in firewalls, including building the first Internet email server for the whitehouse.gov domain, and

intrusion detection system An intrusion detection system (IDS) is a device or software application that monitors a network or systems for malicious activity or policy violations. Any intrusion activity or violation is typically either reported to an administrator or collec ...

s. He has held technical and leadership positions with a number of computer security companies, and is a faculty member of the Institute for Applied Network Security.

Education

Marcus Ranum was born in New York City, and graduated from

Gilman School Gilman School is an all-boys independent school, independent, day school, day, college preparatory school located in the Roland Park neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, United States. There are three school divisions: Lower School, grades pre ...

Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the List of United States ...

before attending

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in

Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

in 1985.

Career

Ranum helped design and implement

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

's Secure External Access Link (SEAL) (later

AltaVista AltaVista was a web search engine established in 1995. It became one of the most-used early search engines, but lost ground to Google and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, which retained the brand, but based all AltaVista searches on its own sear ...

firewall), regarded as the first commercial bastion host firewall, in 1990. He left DEC to work for Trusted Information Systems (TIS) as chief scientist and development manager for Internet security products. It was at TIS that Ranum became responsible for the whitehouse.gov Internet email site. Once charged with that responsibility, Ranum advocated that the whitehouse.com domain be registered as well. Despite his advice, it was not registered by the government, but was later registered for an

adult entertainment The sex industry (also called the sex trade) consists of businesses that either directly or indirectly provide sex-related products and services or adult entertainment. The industry includes activities involving direct provision of sex-related se ...

provider. At TIS, he developed the TIS Internet Firewall Toolkit (fwtk) under a grant from

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

. After TIS, he worked for V-One as chief scientist, and was extensively involved in that company's

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

. Three months after that IPO, Ranum formed his own company, Network Flight Recorder (NFR), and served as

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

for three years before stepping into a CTO role. Ranum later left NFR to consult for TruSecure. In 2004, he became 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 ...

of Tenable, Inc. In addition to his various full-time positions, Ranum has also held board or advisory positions at NFR Security, Protego Networks, and

Fortify Software Fortify Software, later known as Fortify Inc., is a California-based software security vendor, founded in 2003 and acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2010, Micro Focus in 2017, and OpenText in 2023. Fortify offerings included Static application sec ...

Public presentations

Ranum has spoken to

USENIX USENIX is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization based in Berkeley, California and founded in 1975 that supports advanced computing systems, operating system (OS), and computer networking research. It organizes several confe ...

audiences at LISA 1997, 1999 (tutorial) LISA 2000 (keynote), 2002, and 2003 (tutorial). He spoke out against full disclosure at the Black Hat Security Briefings in 2000. More recently, Ranum has spoken at Interop in 2005 and 2007, CanSecWest in 2010, and Secure360 in 2011. He previously taught courses for the

SANS Institute The SANS Institute (officially the Escal Institute of Advanced Technologies) is a private U.S. for-profit company founded in 1989 that specializes in information security, cybersecurity training, and selling certificates. Topics available for tr ...

Influence

Ranum's work has been cited in at least 15 published U.S. patents, as well as numerous other computer and network security articles and books.

Ranum's law

Ranum is cited as the author of an

eponym An eponym is a noun after which or for which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. Adjectives derived from the word ''eponym'' include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''. Eponyms are commonly used for time periods, places, innovati ...

ous law, "You can't solve social problems with software."

Awards

* TISC "clue" award, 2000. * Inducted into the ISSA hall of fame, 2000 or 2001. * Techno-Security Professional of the Year, 2005.

Publications

Articles

Marcus has co-authored a series of "Face Off" articles with

Bruce Schneier Bruce Schneier (; born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer. Schneier is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman ...

, which have appeared approximately bi-monthly in Information Security Magazine since July, 2006. Ranum is one of a number of editors of the SANS Newsbites semiweekly email newsletter. * * * * * *

Books

*''The Myth of Homeland Security''. *''Host Intrusion Monitoring Using Osiris and Samhain'' with Brian Wotring and Bruce Potter. *''Web Security Sourcebook'' with Aviel D. Rubin and Dan Geer.

Personal life

Currently, Ranum lives in Morrisdale, Pennsylvania. His hobbies include photography and

firearm A firearm is any type of gun that uses an explosive charge and is designed to be readily carried and operated by an individual. The term is legally defined further in different countries (see legal definitions). The first firearms originate ...

s. He maintains an active stock photography account on

DeviantArt DeviantArt (formerly styled as deviantART and thus abbreviated as dA) is an American online community that features artwork, videography, photography, and literature, launched on August 7, 2000, by Mathew Stephens, Scott Jarkoff and Angelo Sotir ...

, and he wrote an essay for Oleg Volk's pro-firearms site
www.a-human-right.com
Marcus Ranum was also interviewed by digital artis
Brandon Pence
for the NWFLAA which can be read in 2 parts
Part 1
an
Part 2
He is an atheist, maintaining a blog on the Freethought Blogs network.

References

External links

Marcus Ranum's personal website

Security Solutions profile of Ranum (2006-12-01)

Ranum interview with IEEE Security and Privacy magazine (2006-09-01)

Ranum interview with SecurityFocus (2005-06-21)

Ranum's DeviantArt website (stock)

Ranum's DeviantArt website (portfolio)

DojoSec Lecture — March 2009 — Ranum's discussing the failure of the notion of Cyber-warfare
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ranum, Marcus J. 1962 births Living people Computer security specialists Usenet people Digital Equipment Corporation people American atheists American computer specialists