Rodney Thayer is a private network security consultant in Mountain View, California. His practice includes exploit analysis, network security incident investigations, architecting secure networks, and cryptography. His background is in the development and deployment of network security devices, having participated in the development of various implementations of IPsec, SSL (TLS), and digital certificate systems. He has also worked in the area of network management, having done early work on SNMP and participating in the initial development of Counterpane Internet Security's Managed Security Service. He has over 30 years of experience in the design, development, and deployment of networking and security software. He has extensive experience working to standardize network security protocols and practices through organizations such as the Internet Engineering Task force (IETF.) He was a member of the working Group responsible for delivering the first standard specification of the IPsec protocol, and was involved in developing several IETF specifications including RFC 2411 (IPsec), RFC 2440 (PGP), in addition to involvment in work on TLS (web browser/SSL security) and Digital Certificates (X.509/PKI.) He has written and lectured extensively on security matters and has presented work in a variety of forums including Network World, Security Technique, Networld+Interop, and various other lecture and print venues. He is a member of Network World's Test Alliance, and The Shmoo Group. He can be reached at .