Rod Beckstrom (born February 1961) is an American author, high-tech entrepreneur, and former CEO and President of

ICANN The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces ...

. He previously served as Director of the

National Cybersecurity Center The National Cybersecurity Center (NCC) was founded in 2016 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It was started from a vision of then Governor John Hickenlooper, in coordination with several people from the U ...

Education and early work

Beckstrom received his BA with Honors and Distinction and an MBA from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, where he served as the Chairman of the Council of Presidents of the Associated Students of Stanford University. In August 2007, Beckstrom and Peter Thoeny, author of TWiki co-launched TWIKI.NET, a Web 2.0 company that supports TWiki, an open source wiki. Beckstrom became Chairman and Chief Catalyst. He was also co-founder, Chairman and CEO of CATS Software Inc., a derivatives and risk management software company which went public on

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

and later was sold to Misys PLC.

Author

He is co-author of the best-selling book '' The Starfish and the Spider'', which lays out a new organizational theory for considering all organizations as existing on a continuum between centralized to decentralized, with different implications and strategies for each firm based upon their position on that axis. In interviews with '' The Washington Post'' and '' USA Today'', Beckstrom explains how, using the 'Starfish' concept illustrated in ''The Starfish and the Spider'', the U.S. Government can take a different approach in their dealings with

Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremism, Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arab, Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military ta ...

. Beckstrom is also the formulator of an economic model for valuing networks, Beckstrom's law, which was presented at BlackHat 2009 and Defcon 2009. Beckstrom, a pioneer in the field of

derivatives trading In finance, a derivative is a contract that ''derives'' its value from the performance of an underlying entity. This underlying entity can be an asset, index, or interest rate, and is often simply called the "underlying". Derivatives can be u ...

and firm-wide risk management, was coached by Nobel Laureate William F. Sharpe, which resulted in the first book on a new theory, "Value at Risk."

National Cyber Security Center

On March 20, 2008, Beckstrom was appointed to run the newly created

, a position requiring "advanced thought leadership in areas like coordination, collaboration and team work in order to best serve the mission". On March 5, 2009, less than a year after the position was created, he stated that he would resign as the Director of the

(NCSC) on Friday, March 13, 2009. He has recommended the Deputy Director Mary Ellen Seale as his successor. He stated that a lack of cooperation from the NSA and insufficient funding led to his resignation. He stated that he received $500,000 which funded five weeks of operation. He has stated that he supports a more decentralized approach and opposes the NSA's move to try to "rule over" the NCSC.

Presidency of ICANN

On 25 June 2009, at its 35th meeting in Sydney, Australia, the Board of

resolved to appoint Rod Beckstrom as its CEO and President. At ICANN, he presided over a number of notable developments, including the 15 July 2010 DNSSEC signing of the DNS root, and the 20 June 2011 opening of the gTLD namespace to additional applicants. On July 1, 2012 he was succeeded as CEO by ICANN's COO as CEO pro tem who served in that capacity until Beckstrom's permanent replacement Fadi Chehade was able to take up his position on 1 October 2012.

Investor

Rod Beckstrom is the lead

angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owners ...

in the Encino, CA-based software development company American Legalnet Inc.

Volunteer work

An active participant in the non-profit arena, Beckstrom serves on the board of trustees of Environmental Defense Fund, an organization involved in designing, advocating and implementing environmental policy solutions, such as the

Kyoto Protocol The Kyoto Protocol was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that (part ...

and the California Climate Act. He is also a trustee of Jamii Bora Trust, a micro-lending group with 170,000 members, based in Nairobi.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Beckstrom, Rod Living people Businesspeople in information technology American foreign policy writers American male non-fiction writers George W. Bush administration personnel 1961 births