Advisory Board
Brian O’Higgins is an executive with over 20 years as a leader in security technology development for enterprise and government customers—possibly known best for his role pioneering PKI (public key infrastructure)—...
Brian O’Higgins is an executive with over 20 years as a leader in security technology development for enterprise and government customers—possibly known best for his role pioneering PKI (public key infrastructure)— and as the co-founder and Chief Technology Office of Entrust, a leading Internet Security Company. He was also a co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Third Brigade which is a provider of security products for physical and virtualized servers and which was acquired by Trend Micro in 2009. Brian's approach to security is both visionary and pragmatic. He is a frequent presenter at security and industry events around the globe. In 2008, he was appointed as a delegate to contribute to the Global Cybersecurity Agenda of the International Telecommunications Union.
Brian started his career at Bell-Northern Research (BNR), the R&D arm of Nortel Networks, where he worked on developing innovative applications and technology for telecommunications systems. This included prototyping the world’s first ISDN telephone, design of in-building wireless communications systems and high-performance computing architectures for digital telephone switches. Brian also led the development of the word’s first commercial data communications equipment to incorporate public-key security technology. He established the Secure Networks group within Nortel in 1993, and was instrumental in spinning-out this group as an independent company, Entrust, in 1997.
Brian’s current list of affiliations includes advisory board positions with Defence R&D Canada, Information Technology Association of Canada, Ontario Centers of Excellence, and the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. In addition, he serves on the boards of Recognia and Fischer International, and is an advisor to several other companies.
Dr. Santosh Chokhani has over thirty years of experience in Information Technology, including fifteen years of experience in Information Security. Dr. Chokhani is a world-renowned expert in PKI and in third party product and system...
Dr. Santosh Chokhani has over thirty years of experience in Information Technology, including fifteen years of experience in Information Security. Dr. Chokhani is a world-renowned expert in PKI and in third party product and system evaluations. Having made numerous contributions to the ISO, Internet, and FIPS standards in the area of PKI and information security, some of the PKI standards contributions include development of the certification path processing rules for X.509, discovery of policy mapping flaw and correction, development of CRL processing rules, discovery of security flaw with CRL processing and solutions to the flaw, discovery of security flaw in cryptographic parameters processing and solution to the flaw, development of Internet RFC (2527 and 3647) for CP/CPS.
Dr. Chokhani has made numerous technical contributions to the PKI for Johnson & Johnson; SAFE (Bio Pharma Bridge PKI), CertiPath (Aerospace Bridge PKI), and Department of Defense. He has made several contributions in the area of security and interoperability among the various Government and industry PKI. Dr. Chokhani has also advised Department of Justice, Department of State, Drug Enforcement Administration, National Institutes of Standards and Technology, and United States Postal Service in the areas of PKI and PK enabled applications.
Dr. Chokhani is founder of two high-end information security consulting companies: CygnaCom Solutions and Orion Security Solutions and he also founded and operated Common Criteria testing and FIPS 140-2 testing laboratories at CygnaCom.
Dr. Chokhani was a member of the Secretary of Commerce Industry Advisory Panel on Key Management Infrastructure. He was also a member of the Common Criteria Crypto Working Group and is a past member of the National Security Agency’s Technical Review Board (TRB) and NSA Senior Validator for Common Criteria.
Dr. Chokhani holds BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Bombay and MS and Ph. D. in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers University. Dr. Chokhani’s Ph. D. thesis was in the area of application of Artificial Intelligence to Biomedicine.

