Ron Knode

Ron Knode was an information security expert and member of the Cloud Security Alliance family, who passed away on May 31, 2012. Ron was an innovative thinker and the author of the CSA Cloud Trust Protocol. Ron was a cherished member of CSA, with endless energy and humor to guide his volunteer contributions.

Ron Knode was a Director in the CSC Trusted Cloud & Hosting business unit, where he served as the consulting Trust Architect for CSC’s cloud services and a strategic advisor to all who are seeking an enterprise payoff by employing secure and trusted cloud services as a part of their enterprise IT architecture. He was also a Research Associate in CSC’s internal innovation think tank, known as the Leading Edge Forum (LEF), and an adjunct associate professor in the graduate school of Applied IT (AIT) at Towson University in Towson, Maryland.

Prior to his selection to the LEF, Ron was a Director in CSC’s Global Security Solutions business unit where he was responsible for the design, provisioning, deployment, and measurement of end-to-end security solutions that support CSC’s commercial and government clients around the world. Along with his operational and architectural duties, Ron served the LEF as the primary researcher and author for a programme entitled Digital Trust. That programme explores the ability of an enterprise to create new value with security services and technologies, rather than attempting only to do an incrementally better job of protecting the enterprise value that already exists. He also published a follow-up report with the ACLI on the application of digital trust in the life and annuity industry.

Ron held bachelor and master’s degrees in mathematics from the US Naval Academy and the US Naval Postgraduate School, and he completed doctoral coursework in computer science at the University of Maryland. He was a Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) in accordance with the standards and qualifications of the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA). He was also a fully trained Black Belt in Six Sigma quality improvement processes.