On March 2nd, during the RSA Conference, SAFECode honored Steve Lipner who stepped down from as the Chairman of SAFECode in 2015 when he retired from Microsoft.

First to honor Steve was Glenn Pittaway, a Senior Director at Microsoft in the area of assurance, and SAFECode Board Member. Glenn has worked closely with Steve at Microsoft for more than fifteen years and provided some of his reflections: “Microsoft was fortunate to find Steve, and his wisdom and experience was instrumental in leading the industry away from regarding security as relating to features, towards a view of security as relating to the fundamental practices around software development”. He also commented on the stature of Steve as well as Executive Director Howard Schmidt, ”in a relatively young industry like ours, especially an even younger field like security, we’ve been extremely lucky in SAFECode to benefit from the experience of pioneers and giants such as Steve and Howard.”

Eric Baize, the head of Product Security at EMC who succeeded Steve as SAFECode Chairman, recognized Steve’s key contributions in “turning Trustworthy Computing from a memo into a reality, not just for Microsoft but for the entire industry.” Eric added that “If it was not for Steve and his leadership, all of us would be years behind in implementing secure software development.” Eric then concluded his presentation by stressing that SAFECode’s goal was to continue to build upon the foundation that Steve helped lay. He also thanked Steve on behalf of SAFECode for his leadership in the field of software security.

In a brief speech, Steve Lipner then thanked the membership for the honor of being recognized by his peers. To close the event, Eric Baize announced that SAFECode has created an award named after Steve Lipner to recognize individuals who have significantly contributed to advancing the field of software security assurance.

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Caption: Former SAFECode Chairman Steve Lipner (center) is flanked by Eric Baize (left), the current SAFECode Chairman; and Howard Schmidt (right), the Executive Director of SAFECode.