SSAC Members

(05/2023)

Matt Thomas is a distinguished engineer in Verisign's chief security officer (CSO) applied research division. His research focuses on numerous aspects of internet security, stability and resiliency including but not limited to DDoS attacks, domain name abuse, miscreant behavior within the Domain Name System (DNS), and large-scale measurements and evolving trends in internet architectures.

Thomas is responsible for supporting an array of activities across the company including data-driven analytical functions for Verisign's value-added services, supporting internal research initiatives, external engagement, and supporting critical data analysis efforts. Thomas has more than 15 years of experience working with large, distributed data collection and analysis systems.

Prior to joining Verisign in 2008, Thomas worked as a software engineer at AT&T. He was responsible for designing and implementing a distributed data collection system that measured and analyzed the operational performance of systems and services hosted by AT&T throughout the world.

Thomas earned a Bachelor of Science in computer science and Master of Science in information systems and technology from The Johns Hopkins University. He has authored more than 10 peer-reviewed publications and he has been awarded 11 patents from the USPTO. He is in good standing as a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and Certified Hadoop Developer (CDH).

Disclosure of Interest:

1. Please identify your current employer(s) and position(s).
   Verisign. Distinguished Engineer in the Cyber Security and Strategy division.
2. Please identify the type(s) of work performed at #1 above.
   I am responsible for supporting an array of activities across the company including data-driven analytical functions for Verisign's services, conducting research initiatives, external engagement with the DNS community, and executing Verisign's security, stability, and resiliency projects.
3. Please identify any board or committee positions that you hold that might be perceived as influencing your expressed point of view, irrespective of whether they are voluntary.
   I have served on M3AAWG's (the Messaging, Malware, Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group) board of directors since 2017.
4. Please list any financial or other material relationship beyond de minimus stock ownership that you, your employer, or an immediate family member/significant other has with ICANN or with any individual, company, or other entity that to your knowledge has a current or planned financial or other material relationship with ICANN.
   Verisign is my sole employer. Verisign is a contracted party with ICANN. No immediate family member and/or significant others have any financial or other interest in ICANN including any ICANN policy, program, process, or anything related to ICANN or the ICANN community.
5. Please list any business transactions that you, your employer, or an immediate family member/significant other has had with ICANN within the last 5 years.
   Verisign, my employer, is a registry operator for .com and other gTLDs and is the root zone maintainer on behalf of ICANN (or its subcontractor) for the IANA root. As such, Verisign, and ICANN (or its subcontractor) engage in business transactions via registry agreements, a letter of intent, and the root zone maintainer services agreement. Some of these agreements have been amended, renewed, or entered into within the last 5 years.
6. Is your participation as an SSAC member the subject of any arrangements or agreements between you and any other group, constituency, or person(s)? Please answer "yes" or "no." If the answer is "yes," please describe the arrangements or agreements and the name of the group, constituency, or person(s).
   No.

(05/2023)

Peter Thomassen works for SSE Secure Systems Engineering, a German IT Security Consultancy. He is also the founder and Chief Technology Officer of deSEC, a free, managed DNSSEC hosting platform. It is deSEC's mission to enhance the security of online data transmission, by spreading the seamless use of state-of-the-art encryption technology.

Peter has 20+ years of experience in the Internet and security industry, starting out with his web hosting company a4a (founded 2001) and later serving as an early CTO for the not-for-profit dotHIV TLD registry (2013). In 2014, Peter founded deSEC, and in 2018, he joined SSE where he worked as a Senior Security Expert in software development projects from various enterprise and public sector industries. Today, as a Senior Solutions Architect at SSE, he is an active member of the IETF with contributions to various working groups that have overlap with the DNS. He has presented on related topics at ICANN, IETF, RIPE, and DNS OARC conferences as well as the CA/B Forum. His main interests lie with security concepts that are deployable on large scale and relate to communications privacy, the key exchange problem, and efficient DNSSEC automation.

Peter holds a B.Sc. (2010, University of Würzburg, Germany) and a M.Sc. (2012, Rutgers University, USA) in physics. During the following years, he worked as a particle physics researcher at CERN, Geneva, and obtained a physics Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 2016. His research work was on extracting traces of previously unseen particles using big data samples collected at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. In 2017 and 2018, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in computer science at the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences / Free University Berlin, focusing on Identity Management issues. Today, he occasionally publishes research papers on DNS security matters.

Associated sites: https:/securesystems.de/, https:/desec.io/

Disclosure of Interest

1. Please identify your current employer(s) and position(s).
   1. SSE – Secure Systems Engineering GmbH: Senior Solution Architect
      IT Security Consultancy / Engineering company
   2. deSEC e.V.: Founder / Board member
      Managed DNS hosting platform with DNSSEC out of the box
      Secure communications protocol development
   3. a4a GmbH: Founder, CEO
      Web hosting, e-mail
2. Please identify the type(s) of work performed at #1 above.
   1. Advising clients about their (e.g. cloud) security posture, developing enterprise security concepts, supporting clients' development teams
   2. Software development, protocol development; board duties
   3. Systems administration, executive duties
3. Please identify any board or committee positions that you hold that might be perceived as influencing your expressed point of view, irrespective of whether they are voluntary. None
4. Please list any financial or other material relationship beyond de minimus stock ownership that you, your employer, or an immediate family member/significant other has with ICANN or with any individual, company, or other entity that to your knowledge has a current or planned financial or other material relationship with ICANN.
   – none –
5. Please list any business transactions that you, your employer, or an immediate family member/significant other has had with ICANN within the last 5 years. None
6. Is your participation as an SSAC member the subject of any arrangements or agreements between you and any other group, constituency, or person(s)? Please answer "yes" or "no." If the answer is "yes," please describe the arrangements or agreements and the name of the group, constituency, or person(s).
   no

(05/2023)

Suzanne Woolf is experienced in both the technical and policy aspects of the evolution of the Internet, particularly DNS and other network operations. She has held a variety of roles in technical strategy and policy, product management, software engineering management, and related areas for employers and consulting clients including University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute, ICANN, Internet Systems Consortium, and several TLD registries. At present, she is a fulltime employee of Public Interest Registry (PIR), the operator of .ORG and several other TLDs.

Suzanne's current networking interests center on large scale infrastructure, Internet security, and the evolution of DNS.

In addition to membership in SSAC, Suzanne currently serves as a co-chair of the DNSOP working group of the IETF. She has also served on the Root Server System Advisory Committee (RSSAC) as a member and as liaison to the ICANN Board; the Internet Architecture Board; the corporate boards of DNS-OARC and PIR; and the ARIN Advisory Council.

Disclosure of Interest:

1. Please identify your current employer(s) and position(s).
   I am Senior Director, Technical Community Outreach, for Public Interest Registry, Inc. PIR is the operator of .ORG, one of the oldest and largest gTLDs, and several other smaller gTLDs, including IDNs. PIR is a 501(c)(3) US non-profit membership organization, whose sole member is the Internet Society, a 501(c)(3) devoted to advocating for the open Internet.
2. Please identify the type(s) of work performed at #1 above.
   My job is to work closely with our CTO, Operations team, and Policy team to understand developments in technical bodies such as the IETF, and to apply that knowledge to issues of interest to PIR. It also includes offering my own time and knowledge, as subsidized by PIR, to groups such as SSAC and NCAP in the ICANN community; the IETF; and other organizations that benefit from the technical infrastructure of the Internet.
3. Please identify any board or committee positions that you hold that might be perceived as influencing your expressed point of view, irrespective of whether they are voluntary.
   I'm on the program committee of DNS-OARC (http://www.dns-oarc.net). I'm currently co-chair of the DNS Operations Working Group in the IETF. I'm a long-time member and the original convener of the RSSAC. I've been a board or advisory council member of ARIN, the IETF (as a member of the IAB), ICANN, PIR, and DNS-OARC. None of these organizations attempts to influence my views specifically with regards to issues before SSAC, but I've maintained ties with all of them and they all influence my views.
4. Please list any financial or other material relationship beyond de minimus stock ownership that you, your employer, or an immediate family member/significant other has with ICANN or with any individual, company, or other entity that to your knowledge has a current or planned financial or other material relationship with ICANN.
   My employer operates .ORG and its other gTLDs under contract to ICANN. The PIR RA is the generic RA that the other gTLD operators have also agreed to. In addition, PIR is contracted with ICANN-accredited registrars under the Registry-Registrar Agreement, a generic contract negotiated among ICANN, the registries, and the registrars.
5. Please list any business transactions that you, your employer, or an immediate family member/significant other has had with ICANN within the last 5 years.
   See above on contractual relationships between ICANN org and my employer.
6. Is your participation as an SSAC member the subject of any arrangements or agreements between you and any other group, constituency, or person(s)? Please answer "yes" or "no." If the answer is "yes," please describe the arrangements or agreements and the name of the group, constituency, or person(s).
   My only agreement is with my employer, and we don't have specific terms for my participation in SSAC. I'm expected not to advocate against their interests, but I have leeway to have my own opinions of what those interests are.

(05/2023)

Jiankang Yao is Senior Research Engineer (Standardization Manager) in CNNIC. He got his master's degree of computer science in National University of Singapore and joined CNNIC in 2003 as the research engineer. In CNNIC, he also got his Ph.d degree of Computer Software and Theory in CNIC, CAS (Chinese Academy of Sciences). His main research interests include but not limit to Email Address Internationalization (EAI), Internationalized Domain Names (IDN), DNS, Internet naming and addressing. Since the 62nd IETF meeting in 2005, he has been active in the IETF， and has experience in working as the IETF WG co-chair and secretary. Especially, he made a lot of contribution to the EAI WG from BOF to WG and did a lot of tests of EAI protocols to move EAI documents from experimental RFC to Standard Track RFC and did a lot of work to help the deployment of EAI. Currently he serves as the Co-Secretary of the Chinese Domain Name Consortium (CDNC), and the ccNSO council member. He is also the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) member and an IETF Reviewer in Internationalization Directorate (i18ndir).

Disclosure of Interest:

1. Please identify your current employer(s) and position(s): Senior Research Engineer (Standardization Manager) in CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center)
2. Please identify the type(s) of work performed at #1 above: Research and standardization work related to Internet technology such as DNS, EAI, IDN and EPP.
3. Please identify any board or committee positions that you hold that might be perceived as influencing your expressed point of view, irrespective of whether they are voluntary. None
4. Please list any financial or other material relationship beyond de minimus stock ownership that you or your employer has with any individual, company, or other entity that to your knowledge has a financial or other material relationship with ICANN: CNNIC is a domain name registry.
5. Please list any business transactions that you, your employer, or an immediate family member/significant other has had with ICANN within the last 5 years. In 2019, ICANN UASG supported CNNIC's UA (Universal Acceptance) activities with 10,000 US dollars.
6. Is your participation as an SSAC member the subject of any arrangements or agreements between you and any other group, constituency, or person(s)? Please answer "yes" or "no." If the answer is "yes," please describe the arrangements or agreements and the name of the group, constituency, or person(s): No.