Oral history interview with Stephen Walker

Abstract

Steve Walker, a computer security pioneer and entrepreneur, began his career at the National Security Agency, before becoming a manager at ARPA’s Information Processing Techniques office in the first half the 1970s. He later served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as an expert on computer security and organized key early meetings of some of the nation’s foremost computer security experts that were held at the National Bureau of Standards. In the early 1980s Walker’s career took an entrepreneurial turn as he founded Trusted Information Systems. This company became one of the earliest and most important computer security services and software products firms – producing Trusted Xenix and pioneering the firewall area of the computer security software industry. After TIS was sold, Walker worked for a number of years as an IT venture capitalist. Walker discusses his days at NSA, ARPA's IPTO, OSD, and his leadership of Trusted Information Systems in this interview.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1116862, “Building an Infrastructure for Computer Security History.”