Brian A. LaMacchia is a computer security specialist.

LaMacchia is best known for his work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 establishing the MIT PGP

Pretty Good Privacy

Pretty Good Privacy is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, E-mails, files, directories and whole disk partitions to increase the security...

 Key Server

Key server (cryptographic)

In computer security, a key server is a computer that receives and then serves existing cryptographic keys to users or other programs. The users' programs can be working on the same network as the key server or on another networked computer....

, the first key centric PKI

Public key infrastructure

Public Key Infrastructure is a set of hardware, software, people, policies, and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store, and revoke digital certificates. In cryptography, a PKI is an arrangement that binds public keys with respective user identities by means of a certificate...

 implementation to see widescale use.

LaMacchia currently works for Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 where he has played a leading role in the design of XKMS

XKMS

XML Key Management Specification uses the web services framework to make it easier for developers to secure inter-application communication using public key infrastructure . XML Key Management Specification is a protocol developed by W3C which describes the distribution and registration of public...

, the security architecture for .NET and Palladium

Next-Generation Secure Computing Base

The Next-Generation Secure Computing Base , formerly known as Palladium, is a software architecture designed by Microsoft which is expected to implement parts of the controversial "Trusted Computing" concept on future versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. NGSCB is part of...

.

LaMacchia earned S.B., S.M., and Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 degrees from MIT in 1990, 1991, and 1996, respectively.

Brian's homepage is at http://www.farcaster.com/