Bill Conner
F. William Conner is an American business executive. Education and personal life. Conner was born and reared in West Helena, Arkansas. In his early years, he displayed "an interest in energy conversion". In 1981, he received his bachelor's degree from Princeton University in mechanical engineering and later earned an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1987. Currently, he lives in Dallas, Texas with his wife. Career. With a career spanning more than 30 years across high-tech industries, Conner is a corporate turnaround expert and a global leader in cybersecurity, data and  infrastructure. From 1981 to 1992, he held positions at AT&T including senior engineer, operations manager and strategic planner. Conner held executive positions at Nortel Networks from 1992 to 2001. As the president of Enterprise Data Networks for Nortel, he managed its US$9.1 billion acquisition of Bay Networks. He also served as the first chief marketing officer of Nortel, launching the global marketing campaigns "Come Together" and "What Do You Want the Internet to Be?" Entrust. From 2001 to 2013, Conner was the chief executive officer and president of Entrust, a private software company that specializes in identity-based security . He was responsible for the creation and delivery of identity-based security software and services. Entrust grew to profitability (albeit short due to its early focus on growth) and reached annual sales of well over $100 million by the time of arrival of Conner to the firm in 2001. He shortly thereafter launched a restructuring effort and began to trim workforce annually in an effort to return the company to profitability. He launched a new business model focusing on product portfolios targeted to key verticals and geographies. Spun out of Nortel in 1997, Entrust was a pioneer in public  key infrastructure (PKI) technology by providing the first scalable, robust product to offer public key infrastructure for authentication and encryption for web transactions. In April 2002, Entrust's PKI technology served as the foundation for the prototype of what is now the United States Federal Bridge Certification Authority (FBCA), which is a fundamental element of the trust infrastructure that provides the basis for intergovernmental and cross-governmental secure communications. Entrust's PKI is interoperable with all major FBCA vendors. The Entrust Managed PKI service was the first of its kind to deliver certificates utilized by the U.S. Federal Personal Identity  Verification (PIV) smartcard, providing authentication, encryption and digital signature to protect U.S. Federal assets from unauthorized access. Under Conner's leadership, Entrust also played a key role in the introduction of ePassports, including for the United States, where certificates are utilized to protect the privacy of the biometrics while authenticating the citizen. Conner engineered the company's acquisition by private equity firm Thoma Bravo in 2009, and transitioned Entrust into a private firm. In December 2013, it was announced that Datacard Group had entered into an agreement to purchase Entrust for a reported $500 million. Conner took on a  consultant role during the transition. Silent Circle. On January 5, 2015, Silent Circle announced that its board of directors had appointed Conner as Chief Executive Officer and member of the board of directors. As CEO of Silent Circle, he also joined the board of directors of Blackphone. On June 17, 2016, Silent Circle blogged that Conner had resigned as CEO and would remain only as an "advisor," implying he had also resigned his seat on the board. SonicWall. Formerly a division of Dell Software Inc., SonicWall was spun off and acquired by Francisco Partners and Elliott Management in June 2016 . On November 1, 2016, SonicWall announced that it had commenced standalone operations, and named Conner its President and CEO. SonicWall states it is the North American market share leader in internet security appliances among small and medium-sized enterprises. In August 2016, SonicWall launched its Capture Advanced Threat Prevention Service, and has analyzed more than 4 million suspicious files for its clients as of November 1, 2016. The cloud-based service uses multiple engines to help prevent attacks, and automates remediation techniques. Conner stated publicly that SonicWall will continue its relationship with Dell, as a reseller partner, and will continue  its service areas focused on network security, secure mobile access, email security and encryption, and management and reporting. In a public statement to employees, Conner stated he wants to focus SonicWall on four areas of growth: In September 2018, at a SonicWall Channel Partner conference, Conner outlined the rapid growth in non-standard port threats, and explained a business reorganization to serve both the SME and enterprise business markets focusing on the enterprise verticals of retail, education and government. To help organizations pivot to remain operational during the COVID-19 pandemic, in April 2020 Conner introduced SonicWall's Boundless Cybersecurity model  designed to secure organizations that are increasingly remote, mobile, and less secure, and empower organizations and businesses to close the growing cybersecurity business and skills gaps. Comodo CA (now Sectigo). In October 2017, Francisco Partners acquired Comodo Certification Authority (Comodo CA) and named Conner Chairman of the Board. This marked a transition in ownership from the Comodo organization as Comodo CA, an industry leader in SSL security with more than 200,000 customers across 150 countries, focuses on the significant market opportunity associated with SSL certificates and the massive growth in online and IoT traffic. In November 2018, Comodo CA rebranded  itself as Sectigo, to avoid confusion with its former parent entity Comodo Group. As a provider of SSL and other types of digital certificates, Sectico is also heavily invested in PKI. With the new name came a large investment in X.509 certificate management, including the discovery and reporting of certificates issued via PKI but also the automated installation of certificates, which helps saves labor cost while eliminating mistakes made by mis-configured and expired certificates. In 2019, Sectigo was the first commercial CA to delivered automated installation of both Public and Private SSL certificates into web servers and load balancers  on both sides of the firewall using ACME (RFC8555), in collaboration with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Sectigo also released industry-first PKI DevOps integrations for management and container orchestration platforms, including Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible and Terraform. In 2020, GI Partners announced a definitive agreement to acquire Sectigo, with the intention of supporting the acceleration of Sectigo’s security innovations and growth and fostering worldwide expansion. Cybersecurity and infrastructure global trends. Conner has been active in various public-private partnerships on cybersecurity, cybertheft and infrastructure security. He helped unveil the INTERPOL Global Smart eID Card and addressed the United Nations  on global challenges in cybercrime in June 2010. He co-chaired the Corporate Governance Task Force of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security National Cybersecurity Partnership. He has been a member of the Business Software Alliance and the Cyber Security Industry Alliance (now a branch of TechAmerica technology trade association). He created and co-chaired the Information Security Governance Task Force of the Business Software Alliance. He is a member of the Enterprise Software Roundtable. In a September 2018 article on cybersecurity trends, Conner describes innovative next-generation security techniques in the cloud and the deep web. The article references  RTDMI (Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection), a new patent-pending technology created by SonicWall. In February 2018, former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and Bill Conner collaborated on an opinion article written for "The Hill". In it, they detail some of the recent actions taken by the U.S. Congress and the SEC regarding cyber accountability and transparency. In 2017, Conner became a Forbes Community Voice Contributor, as a member of the Forbes Technology Council. His articles have featured topics such as cybersecurity and policy trends, cyber threat intelligence, and how human predictability factors into cyberattacks. He  has also written articles and contributed to reports on email-borne cyberattacks and ransomware. In February 2012, Conner took part in a United States House of Representatives committee on Energy and Commerce hearing to discuss cybersecurity threats facing the US and the role of public-private partnerships play in defense. Conner has recently spent time discussing the effects of spear phishing schemes on weak authentication, notably the rash of attacks on media outlets, and the risks of insider threats.