Tim Ober Email & Phone Number

Abingdon, Md, Us

Well, the last year was interesting to say the least -- leaving CSPi and going to StorMagic and Clear Ballot that is. My intent was not for short stints -- but for various reasons I just knew I needed to move on. Actually my time at Clear Ballot was trumped once I learned there was an opening to work with many of the folks I worked with for 20 years at the old SafeNet in MD. Combine that with I just wasn't finding happiness in managing, leading, anymore -- hard to describe but being honest. While I was still hands on it was becoming less development focus -- still visionary but less hands on. And after thinking about what makes me happy, developing/architecture/vision that is, and combine that with a chance to work with some of my peers from back at SafeNet, my choice to leave Clear Ballot, was easy! I am working in the Thales TCT organization -- which is located a little North of Baltimore, in Abingdon, MD. I am working remote in my home office of Atkinson, NH! Our current focus is to build different flavors of HSMs, their integrations, and some other products outside of it -- all for the USG. I am currently working on adding a network stack to the next generation backup HSM. Seems like old technology, its not, and its got some very interesting challenges with user experience and compliancy. I am also bringing in some new vision for how to do this using mTLS and IAA (Identity Authentication Authorization); approaches not used in our products nor the competitors. I am excited to be back with many of the folks I worked with 20 years ago. I will update this when I get more under my belt!

Boston, Massachusetts, Us

Bristol, United Kingdom, Gb

Deerfield Beach, Fl, Us

I started out as a Senior Director of Engineering and then moved into VP of Engineering about a year into it when they replaced the GM of the BU I was in. I was brought in to changed the culture, the direction of the products, the engineering process, rebuild the team (HW and SW), and create a new product line. I achieved all of what I/we was asked to do and more! Much of this was a team effort.I first dismantled the HW team, we were building 10G Ethernet solutions, custom PCIe cards, for HFT and network security (think IDS). I moved us to a COTS model for our new direction to move us to the create a next generation secure platform on the edge. I built a team of 30+ engineers, mostly SW and test, to move us in this new direction, the new product, SDS (Software Defined Security). This would be comprised on SW, partner based developed SmartNICs, and some appliances (COTS).I designed several SmartNIC boards that we shopped to several partners and got them to take on the their development -- this included the SoCs from Mellanox (now NVidia), NXP, Cavium, and Broadcom. I was able to get large partners like Advantech to build the boards. We created leading industry SmartNIC solutions with SoCs that offered high performance ARM cores ranging from 16 to 64 cores. We built 2x10G/25G/50G/100G flavors. I was responsible for the architecture of SDS that myself and I developed. This was a secure orchestrator that could massively scaled out the deployment of security applications to run on these SmartNICs, appliances, bare-metal machines, or VMs (KVM, VMware) as containerized applications. Managing them, the resource allocations, how they interacted with their intended targets, all of the security from the RoT on each target to the sophisticated IAA (Identity Authentication Authorization) to securely deploy and use them. The deployed security applications were high end packet brokers for SIEMs, SOARS, XDR as well as micro-HSM, IDS, etc.

Meudon, Fr

In my last five years at SafeNet I built various teams from HW to SW to produce various secure products for the USG as well as for the commercial space, I drove these product's architecture, design, management of HW/SW teams, and hands on development for: an OC-192 encryptor, various ethernet link encryptors (1x10G, 2x10G, 4x10G), key server appliance, 2x10G secure storage appliance (for NAS and other network based storage), and a small form factor HSM.These products were all developed with my teams -- the HW, mechanical, software/firmware, crypto boards. They were all either FIPS 104-2 L3 or Type 1 (CV/SV) certified. The OC-192 and Ethernet link encryptors were used in both Gulf wars -- deployed out there. I ended up causing some technical controversies (I so enjoy doing that :-) ) as I moved most of these products away from tradition Intel like solutions and went with dense multi-core solutions, using 64 and 72 cores, the Tilera SoCs (they eventually were gobbled up after multiple acquisitions by nVIDIA). These products were all very successful, hitting all of the performance requirements, power, and security. I thought achieving the things we did as a team with the ASICs and PCI accelerator cards was incredible but what we achieved with the appliances were leading edge in crypto, network security, appliance security (physical and tamper resistance), and that we had to learn so many diverse domains. We achieved this because we had the best engineering team I could imagine -- while I worked with some great minds at Bell Labs I can say that the engineering team I built at SafeNet is the best team I have worked with, ever -- nothing has matched them to date. Not just in talent, but their care for TEAM and the spirit and support we had for each other! It was my honor to work with the team, I am so proud of what we all achieved! All these products in a 5 year span!Well all good things come to an end, so with the acquisition of SafeNet by Gemalto I left!

Meudon, Fr

We started out as IRE and then evolved into SafeNet. Myself, Mike Kaplan, and Peter Reed ran from Lucent (when it spun out of AT&T) and joined IRE to work for Tony Caputo (CEO) and start a new team in the MA area -- IRE was located mostly, R&D wise, in MD.The three of us built amazing HW and SW teams and we set off to be the first to develop an ASIC that could completely accelerate IPsec. We built ASICs, FPGAs, and PCI accelerator cards that had all the latest crypto algorithms, advanced key management, and tons of application integrations. Besides crypto we had SDKS for building IPsec complete solutions (and other integrations) with our HW or our SW crypto-library, known as CGX, and widely used in top 10 companies in the world for their crypto. We actually were the first to have IPsec/VPN patents for ICs and the first to actually implement a secure enclave mode in the our ASICs. All of our crypto operations executed in secure mode -- the secure enclave we developed into our ASICs, which were designed as SoCs!The ASICs we developed were used in many customer products; what got us off the ground and got the $ rolling in was with Cisco as they put our ASICs in all of their routers and VPNs, including the PIX FW. It was through a lot the revenues that we generated with these products that allowed SafeNet to acquire rainbow and many other companies. This moved SafeNet into being the 2nd largest HSM based company. Eventually now the #1 as we were gobbled up in 2016 by Gemalto and then eventually Thales. Besides creating most of the architecture and designs, I was hands on in development of all parts of the products, complex chip testing automation, pre-sales eng., post-sales eng., M&A for all the great companies we acquired, and drove most of engineering.Lots of blood and sweat during these times but the best times of my career! Not to mention working with some of the best leadership: Mike Kaplan (GM), Tony Caputo (CEO), and Carole Argo (CFO).

Dallas, Tx, Us

I was on the development team that built various products for the USG -- most notably the STU-III, the 3rd generation secure telephone. Back in these times we built everything from the HW, the mechanical design, to the compilers and OS. The STU-III can be found in the crypto-museum! This led into various developments of other related products such as secure modems (showing my age), ISDN secure phone, and even a secure fax encryptor! And then eventually into crypto-accelerator ASICs. But of course -- getting to work with some of the worlds best engineering minds in the world at Bell Labs! This is where I got my architecture grounding! Unfortunately all great things come to an end, AT&T broke up and dissolved the real Bell Labs -- then entered Lucent, grrr..... Not for me I moved on quickly to Safenet (started out as IRE) with my boss' boss at Bell Labs, Mike Kaplan; the best person I have ever worked for, which who was my mentor and friend. I can truly say my career would not be anything close to what it has been if it was for Mike.

Mscs, Computer Science

Bscs, Computer Science

Ascs, Computer Science