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Leadership Lessons: CSO Compass Awards 2008

Three of the six 2008 CSO Compass Award winners - Ed Amoroso, Ron Baklarz and Renee Guttmann - share takeaways drawn from diverse backgrounds

By Mary Brandel

May 07, 2008 — CSO —

Edward Amoroso
Senior VP and Chief Security Officer, AT&T

"Growing up in a computer science family got me exposed to some of the greatest minds of computer security at a young age. When I was little, my dad's friend was Peter Neumann, one of the world's greatest security engineers. If we had a Nobel Prize for computer security, he would have won it three times. These were extremely interesting people who were knowledgeable about everything, not just technology. They told the most interesting anecdotes, from the worlds of both art and science. I decided early on to be sort of like that. Similarly, Cliff Stoll was an astronomer before getting into security, and a lot of the good computer security experts are from different disciplines so they take a different view. Richard Feynman, a physicist, was breaking codes during the Manhattan Project, using techniques we now use to crack passwords. He was one of the world's first hackers."

Edward Amoroso

Edward Amoroso serves as senior vice president and chief security officer for AT&T Services. His responsibilities include real-time protection of AT&T's vast network and computing infrastructure; security policy, planning and architecture for AT&T's enterprise; digital rights management and security support for AT&T's IPTV and entertainment initiatives; and lead design, development and operations support for AT&T's managed and network-based security services. Amoroso's 22-year career at AT&T began at Bell Laboratories. "I was following my mom's advice to join a company that wouldn't change much," he jokes. Computer science runs in the family—not only are his brother and sister also in the field, but his father was one of the first people in the world to receive a master's degree and a PhD in computer science, at University of Pennsylvania.

While at AT&T, he began by working on securing the Unix operating system, as well as on numerous federal government security initiatives. More recently, he has championed AT&T's network-based security strategy, centered around emerging in-the-cloud protection services such as Internet Protect and DDoS Defense.

Amoroso has authored research papers and four books on information security, including Cyber Security, which is written for mainstream readers. He holds MS and PhD degrees in computer science from the Stevens Institute of Technology and is a graduate of the Senior Executive ProÂ¬gram at the Columbia Business School. He has served as an adjunct professor in the computer science department at Stevens for the past 18 years. Over the years, he says, "it's been an interesting evolution to watch security grow from being a niche player to something mainstream."