Synopsys forms Technical Advisory Board to foster innovation

Synopsys has announced the formation of a Technical Advisory Board (TAB) to guide the technical direction of the Synopsys Software Integrity Group’s security products and services, foster innovation and help ensure long-term business success. The five-member board of experienced software and security executives will counsel Synopsys on broader trends in the software industry, provide input on its solutions strategy, and help align its priorities with the requirements of its customers and market.

“Delivering exceptional value to our customers through innovative, cutting-edge solutions is core to our business,” said Andreas Kuehlmann, general manager of the Software Integrity Group. “Though our staff already includes many of the world’s premier software security experts, we understand it is important to build and maintain an objective outside perspective to review and augment our technical strategies. The TAB members, made up of accomplished technologists, will help us do this.”

The TAB will be chaired by Dr. Gary McGraw, vice president of security technology at Synopsys. The initial board members include Dr. Brian Chess (Oracle), Dr. Neil Daswani (Symantec), Dr. Charlie Miller (Cruise Automation), and Dr. Laurie Williams (North Carolina State University).

• Brian Chess, Ph.D., is global vice president of infrastructure, security, and compliance at Oracle NetSuite. Previously he was founder and chief scientist at Fortify Software. Brian holds a Ph.D. in computer engineering from the University of California, where he studied computer security and methods for identifying vulnerabilities in source code. He has been granted more than a dozen patents related to integrated circuit design, web-based applications, and computer security.
• Neil Daswani, Ph.D., is the chief information security officer for Symantec’s Consumer Business Unit. He has served in a variety of research, development, teaching, and managerial roles at LifeLock (acquired by Symantec), Twitter, Dasient, Google, Stanford University, NTT Docomo USA Labs, Yodlee, and Telcordia Technologies (formerly Bellcore).
• Charlie Miller, Ph.D., is the principal autonomous vehicle security architect at Cruise Automation. After receiving his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame, he spent 5 years as a computer hacker for the National Security Agency. Since then he has worked for various companies in the private sector, including Twitter, Uber, and Didi Chuxing. Charlie is renowned for a highly publicized demonstration in 2015 in which he and colleague Chris Valasek remotely hacked a Jeep Cherokee, leading to a recall of 1.4 million vehicles.
• Laurie Williams, Ph.D., is the interim department head of computer science and a professor in the Computer Science Department of the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University (NCSU). Since 2011, Laurie has been a co-director of the NCSU Science of Security Lablet, sponsored by the National Security Agency. Laurie is an IEEE Fellow and has more than 240 refereed publications.
• Gary McGraw, Ph.D., is the vice president of security technology of Synopsys. Prior to Synopsys, Gary served as the CTO of Cigital, which was acquired by Synopsys in 2016. He is a globally recognized authority on software security and the author of eight best-selling books on this topic. Besides serving as a strategic counselor for top business and IT executives, Gary is on the advisory boards for several software and security companies.