Marcus Ranum

Marcus J. Ranum was born November 5, 1962, in New York City, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Johns Hopkins University in 1985. He went on to become one of the formative engineers of network perimeter security, working first at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) before moving into firewall and intrusion-detection product development.

Early Firewall Work

At DEC, Ranum helped design and implement the Secure External Access Link (SEAL), a system widely cited as the first commercial bastion-host firewall, put into service around 1990. He then joined Trusted Information Systems (TIS) as chief scientist, where he wrote the TIS Internet Firewall Toolkit (FWTK), released in October 1993. The FWTK source code later formed the technical basis for TIS's commercial Gauntlet firewall product.

Protecting whitehouse.gov

While at TIS, Ranum built and operated the first Internet email server for the whitehouse.gov domain, giving him direct responsibility for securing one of the earliest high-profile U.S. government Internet presences.

Intrusion Detection and NFR Security

Ranum founded Network Flight Recorder (NFR), one of the pioneering commercial network intrusion-detection system vendors, later known as NFR Security. He served first as the company's CEO and later as its CTO.

Later Career and Industry Commentary

Ranum subsequently became chief security officer of Tenable, Inc. in 2004. Alongside his product work, he built a reputation as an outspoken essayist and critic of security-industry practices, formulating 'Ranum's Law' ('you can't solve social problems with software') in 1999, and co-authoring the long-running 'Face Off' debate column with Bruce Schneier starting in 2006.

Legacy

Ranum is widely credited as one of the engineers who turned the firewall from a research concept into a practical, deployable commercial security product, and his early work is frequently cited in histories of Internet security infrastructure as foundational to the modern network-perimeter-security industry.

Timeline

• 1962-11-05Born in New York City.
• 1990Helped design the DEC Secure External Access Link (SEAL), cited as the first commercial bastion-host firewall.
• 1993-10Released the TIS Internet Firewall Toolkit (FWTK).
• 1999Formulated 'Ranum's Law.'
• 2004Became chief security officer of Tenable, Inc.
• 2006-07Began co-authoring the 'Face Off' debate column with Bruce Schneier.