Oral history interview with Eldon Worley

Abstract

Eldon Worley was a longtime software scientist/engineer at IBM Research in San Jose. He pioneered Information Management Facility (IMF), a path breaking security system that was the underlying basis for the IBM security product Resource Access Control Facility, or RACF. After this work left IBM Research to be developed into a product, Worley continued to analyze and provide feedback to IBM’s development staff. RACF has gone through many different releases since its first iteration in the mid-1970s. Worley provides background on the origins of IMF and RACF, and how RACF evolved over two decades—including perspective on customer installations of RACF in the UK, where he spent time in both the mid-1970s and mid-1980s.

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