Lance J. Hoffman

Lance J. Hoffman is an emeritus professor of computer science at The George Washington University (GW). He developed the first regularly offered university course on computer security at the University of California, Berkeley in 1970. His second book, Modern Methods for Computer Security and Privacy, published in 1977, was a standard textbook in the few computer security courses offered at the time around the world. His other books, all anthologies, captured the state of cybersecurity and privacy at various times:

a) Security and Privacy in Computer Systems in 1973, the year of the first international connections with the ARPANET

b) Computers and Privacy in the Next Decade in 1980, after the advent of public-key cryptography

c) Rogue Programs: Viruses, Worms, and Trojan Horses in 1990, after viruses and other malware were becoming common problems

d) Building in Big Brother: The Encryption Policy Debate in 1995, during cryptographic policy debates related to the proposed Clipper chip.

A Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, Dr. Hoffman institutionalized the ACM Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy. He has served on a number of Advisory Committees including those of Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Homeland Security, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and IBM. He has chaired the Information Security Subcommittee of the IEEE Committee on Communications and Information Policy and is a member of relevant subcommittees of the ACM US Technology Policy Committee.

His research has spanned multiple aspects of cybersecurity, including models and metrics for secure computer systems, cryptography policy, risk analysis, societal vulnerability to computer system failures, improved architectures for in-vehicle security systems, a smart-card-protected operating system, portable security labs, medical record security and privacy, and statistical inference for data mining.

Prof. Hoffman’s thought leadership has included the organizing of several projects that pushed forward emerging areas of cybersecurity over decades. These included a 1987 workshop that was one of the first to explore issues related to Internet voting; a 1999 study of foreign encryption products that explored the effect of the United States export control regime on American and foreign manufacturers and produced his Congressional testimony and the display of an array of the products purchased at the time; a 2004 workshop that explored a National Cyber Security Exercise for Universities that sparked several cybersecurity educational competitions; a 2010 workshop that articulated steps to insure that universities produce appropriately educated individuals for the cybersecurity workforce; and the development of new courses as the field of cybersecurity grew, that focused on e-commerce security, information policy, and cybersecurity and governance.

Dr. Hoffman served as thesis advisor for nine doctoral students. He initiated GW’s CyberCorps scholarship program that has produced over a hundred cybersecurity experts with degrees in at least ten majors. These graduates have gone on to work for dozens of different government agencies and many have then gone on to the private sector, several starting their own companies.

In the private sector, Dr. Hoffman developed an early personal computer-based risk analysis system, RISKCALC, that for a short time was a commercial product. He also serves occasionally as an expert witness on issues related to his expertise.

Dr. Hoffman earned his Ph. D. in Computer Science in 1970 from Stanford University, after a B.S. in Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University.