Nicko van Someren

Dr. Nicholas Nicko van Someren PhD, FREng, FBCS (born 1967) is a British computer scientist, cryptographer and entrepreneur. He is known for having founded ANT Software, and nCipher, as well as for previous roles as chief security architect at Juniper Networks and chief technology officer at Good Technology and the Linux Foundation, where he ran the Core Infrastructure Initiative.[1] He is currently the chief technology officer at Absolute Software Corporation.

Nicko van Someren
Nicko van Someren at Kiwicon in Wellington, New Zealand (2012)
CitizenshipBritish
Alma materTrinity College, Cambridge
Scientific career
FieldsComputer Science
Doctoral advisorNeil Wiseman

Education and early life

Van Someren attended King College Choir School in Cambridge, UK before receiving a scholarship to Oakham School in Rutland. He went on to study as an undergraduate in Computer Science at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he subsequently earned a PhD.[2]

Van Someren credits his interest in business to his father, who ran a business from their home when he was young.[3] While still at school van Someren took summer jobs with Acorn Computers and acquired an interest in cryptography by reading about public key encryption in Scientific American.[4]

Businesses

In 1992 Nicko van Someren and his brother Alex van Someren, along with two friends, founded ANT Software[5] to build networking hardware. While with ANT, van Someren wrote the first version of the Fresco web browser which helped the company move from being primarily a hardware company to a software company. ANT went public on the London Alternative Investments Market in March 2005.[6] In February 2013 ANT was acquired by Espial Group.[7]

In 1996 van Someren, along with his brother Alex co-founded nCipher[8] to build high speed cryptographic accelerators and hardware security modules. nCipher went public on the London Stock Exchange on October 2000, at the time valuing the company at around £450 million.[9] In October 2008 nCipher was acquired by Thales Group.[10]

Van Someren joined Good Technology as CTO in 2011, [11] and remained with Good until its acquisition by BlackBerry Limited in 2015.

In 2019, van Someren joined Absolute Software Corporation as CTO.[12]

Accomplishments

In 2008 Dr. van Someren was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering[13] in the UK.

Work in computer security

Van Someren has published numerous papers in the field of computer security. In 1998 he co-authored a paper[14] with Adi Shamir introducing the concept of key finding attacks. A statistical key finding attack was used by van Someren to locate the signature verification keys used by Microsoft to validate the signatures on MS-CAPI plug-ins. One of these key was later discovered to be referred to as the NSAKEY by Microsoft, sparking some controversy.[15]

References
  1. "The Linux Foundation Appoints New Chief Technology Officer, Open Source Community Veterans to Executive Team".
  2. "PhD graduates of the Rainbow Group".
  3. "Interview: Alex and Nicko van Someren".
  4. "Me and My Partner: Alex Van Someren And Nicko Van Someren". Archived from the original on 20 June 2022.
  5. "Cambridge Ring Hall of Fame: Companies started by Computer Lab graduates and staff". 23 January 2018.
  6. "ANT goes public in UK on back of surge in IPTV deployments".
  7. "Espial Completes Acquisition ANT plc".
  8. Greteman, Blaine (28 July 2003). "Time Global Business August 2003 / Tech Survivors: nCipher, Nicko and Alex van Someren". Time.
  9. "nCipher braces itself for choppy waters after IPO".
  10. "Thales completes nCipher acquisition".
  11. "Good Technology Hires Security Expert, Nicko van Someren, as New CTO".
  12. "Absolute Appoints Distinguished Security Expert and Technologist Dr. Nicko van Someren as Chief Technology Officer".
  13. "List of Fellows – Royal Academy of Engineering".
  14. Shamir, Adi; van Someren, Nicko (1 January 1998). Playing Hide and Seek With Stored Keys. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. pp. 118–124. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.40.4467.
  15. "Microsoft/NSA Info". 17 June 2000. Archived from the original on 17 June 2000. Retrieved 12 October 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
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