Next we move on to trace Taher’s work after Securify, which is currently back to being a private company, with $9.5 M revenue in 2006 revenue, having achieved 339% growth last year. SM: Who is running Securify today? TE: The CEO is Buck French. He was actually an investor in the company from JP Morgan
A rather short venture for Taher results in some very impressive results. Here he details the sale of Securify. SM: You are saying you have an expert system which knows what behavior patterns are are allowed, and if the patterns match those heuristics it is OK? TE: I don’t like the word expert system because
Taher addresses some of the unexpected impacts of the growth of the Internet, and the impact this had on network design. These thoughts lead into the development of Securify. SM: What were you doing with Securify? TE: That was mid 1998, and it was an attempt to make networks work correctly knowing the entities you
Taher continues the discussion regarding the development of SSL at Netscape, and then moving on to his next startup. SM: What did you have to do to the SSL algorithm? TE: It had security issues that needed to be fixed. It really had to be bullet proof for eCommerce. SM: It had holes? TE: Just
Taher was also one of the key individuals associated with the development of SSL at Netscape. In this episode, we discuss the genesis of that work. SM: Why did you leave when the company was just taking off? TE: I got bored. When I told Jim I got bored, and he told me I could
Taher has a great background with many security and cryptography companies. Here we track his invovlement in RSA. SM: What year does that bring us to? TE: 1991. The piece of InfoChip I was responsible for got sold to Cyrex, which is a chip company down in Texas. I ended up leaving, and after calling
Taher and I chart his path from college into the professional world. Entrepreneurs often learn from false starts and moderately successful or unsuccessful experiments. Taher describes some of his. SM: Was Netscape your first job? TE: No, I graduated in 1984. One of my colleagues was at HP, and he called me and convinced me
In our next segment, Taher discusses his cryptography background and how he coverted it into a professional career. SM: What did you focus on for your PhD work that led you into your professional career? TE: I developed this signature scheme … The Elgamal crypto scheme – of course I did not give it that