 As an architect in the Windows organization at Microsoft Corporation, Carl Ellison is responsible for designing improvements in Windows®, especially with regard to security, and with reviewing the architecture of various Microsoft products, including protocol documentation.
Ellison joined Microsoft in September 2003. Before that, he was responsible
for the security architecture of a number of projects at Intel Corporation,
including the first version of security for UPnP™, a design to allow devices
on home networks to discover and interact with each other with little or no
administrative effort. Ellison worked at Intel from July 1998 until he joined
Microsoft.
Ellison's long career in system architecture and security includes work in cryptography and related areas at CyberCash, the first Internet payment company, from 1996 to 1998; at Trusted Information Systems Inc. from 1994 to 1996; and at Stratus Computer from 1987 to 1994, where his duties included research into fault-tolerant architecture, which allows computers to run at full speed even after a part has broken.
Ellison is best known in the security community for his work in distributed authentication and authorization, especially through Simple Public Key Infrastructure/Simple Distributed Security Infrastructure (SPKI/SDSI), a distributed authorization system; for his designs for secure key recovery without trusted parties and secure mutual authentication using a collection of shared “secrets”, rather than the intervention of third parties; and for his support of PKI research.
But his professional career has not been entirely devoted to security. It includes developing and inventing in the areas of image processing, audio processing, perception research, character recognition, distributed computing, and real-time 3-D graphics, among others. He has published extensively on security topics, and has issued 10 patents and has more than 40 applications pending. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR). He served two 3-year terms as an elected member of the AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility.
Ellison earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and did work toward a doctorate in computer science at the University of Utah.
Ellison lives in Seattle and has one daughter. He sings tenor in the chorus, currently for St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle, but before that with the Trinity Consort in Portland, the Harvard-Radcliffe Chorus, and the Back Bay Chorale, both in Massachusetts; the Baltimore Symphony Chorus; and the Oregon Symphonic Choir.
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