Ryan Hurst to oversee the company's technology vision and help develop the role of Certificate Authorities in public trust.

GlobalSign, a Certification Authority (CA) and provider of SSL Partner Programs, yesterday announced the appointment of Ryan Hurst, a security expert, as its new Chief Technology Officer. In his role, Ryan becomes responsible for developing the overall technology vision, product architecture, standards development, compliance and will be overseeing the company's engineering and operations organizations.

The company avers that Ryan comes to it from Microsoft, where he was responsible for security engineering within the Microsoft Advertising business. Prior to that he was responsible for integrating security and networking technologies such as cryptography, Digital Certificates, smart cards, biometrics, code signing, document signing, and network authentication into many successful Microsoft products, as well as being critical to the management of the Microsoft Root Certificate program - the repository of Certificate Authorities authorized by Microsoft to provide publicly trusted Digital Certificates. Ryan has also authored a number of patents relating to security and software design and has been an active participant in the standards community, having co-authored and contributed to standards in forums such as the IETF and the Trustworthy Computing Group.

"We are extremely excited to see Ryan join the GlobalSign team. He has earned an incredible reputation in the industry as a recognized security expert, and his experience will immediately help GlobalSign fulfill our goal of providing trusted Digital Certificate solutions to enterprises and partners of all sizes," said Steve Waite, Chief Executive Officer, GMO GlobalSign. "Ryan's vision will be invaluable as the public trust model continues to evolve to stay ahead of the growing threats to the modern internet society."

Speaking about his appointment, Ryan Hurst said, "GlobalSign remains one of the few pure-play Certificate Authorities and has maintained one of the most credible names in the industry over its many years of delivering PKI solutions. I am very excited to help direct the technical aspects of the company, as GlobalSign bolsters its position in the enterprise security market, in particular, its exciting new mobile and cloud security solutions."