Tina Bird brings rigorous scientific discipline, a wealth of network administration and Internet security expertise, and substantial teaching experience to her role as the Security Architect for InfoExpress. tbird's history with InfoExpress extends back to 1996, when she selected their award-winning V/TCP Secure VPN product to provide remote access virtual private networking for Cerner Corporation in Kansas City. Now, the company's focus is on the burgeoning policy enforcement space. tbird's experience surviving Blaster and its relatives on the Stanford campus convinced her that a fundamentally different approach to desktop PC security management was required.

At InfoExpress, tbird provides strategic guidance in the development of the CyberGatekeeper product line, as well as researching new vulnerabilities and exploits. She represents InfoExpress in the Trusted Computing Group's Trusted Network Connect subgroup. And she is writing and speaking about policy enforcement technologies in general, including 802.1x, standards-based enforcement mechanisms and Cisco's Network Admission Control, as well as talks specifically geared towards InfoExpress products.

tbird moderates the Log Analysis and VPN mailing lists. The VPN Web site is one of the Internet's most popular sources of information on virtual private networking technologies. With Marcus Ranum, she runs http://www.loganalysis.org, a portal for building enterprising logging infrastructures and interpreting log data. tbird is a co-moderator of the Patch Management mailing list.

Previously tbird was responsible for technical review and implementation of Internet firewalls, virtual private networks and authentication systems at Cerner Corporation in Kansas City, and subsequently for Secure Network Group in Lawrence, Kansas; the Director of Network Intelligence at Counterpane Internet Security; and a Computer Security Officer for Stanford University. Her responsibilities have included assessment of threats to corporate assets and current security practices, technical evaluation of available products, planning for long-term growth of Internet and extranet infrastructure, and network configuration and management in accordance with security policy. At Secure Network Group she also developed and implemented a training curriculum for the company and its customers. In this regard she obtained vendor certification from Security Dynamics to provide ACE/Server Administration courses, developed and presented classes on Sidewinder, FireWall-1 and Gauntlet firewalls as well as classes for USENIX and Network World on virtual private networks. At Counterpane she developed strategies and documentation for integrating customer devices into the monitoring system; tested new attacks and vulnerabilities to determine log-based forensic signatures; and wrote alerts for both internal use and customer distribution, based on significant new security vulnerabilities and attacks. At Stanford, she worked on the design and implementation of security infrastructure for University systems; writing Security Alerts for desktop and server machines on the 40000-host network; healthcare information security & HIPAA compliance; and extending the university's logging infrastructure. tbird was the primary Stanford representative for FIRST, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams.

tbird graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a B.S. in physics, and has a master's degree and Ph.D in astrophysics from the University of Minnesota.

Last Updated: 10 January 2005