Alexander W. Dent
awdspam(at)gmail.com

Autobiography

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I am a Senior Director in Engineering in charge of the Integrated Platform Security and Engineering group at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. The group has two major responsibilities: the SSER team looks at security architectures for SOCs that will support new technologies in a flexible and secure manner for the next decade and the COG team manages Qualcomm's high-value keying material in a secure manner while exposing services that allow authorised users to use those keys in an efficient way. Prior to starting the IPSE team, I was interm lead for Qualcomm's security expert group (QPSI) and director responsible for QPSI's Security Engineering team. The Security Engineering team has responsible for identifying areas where Qualcomm products may be subject to security risks, reviewing the design and implementation of technology in those areas, implementations, as well as handling incident response.

Prior to joining Qualcom, I was a lecturer and reader in information security in the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, University of London. The role was roughly equivalent to a US associate professor. I obtained my doctorate in combinatorial design theory and then switched to the study of mathematical cryptography, which is my primary research interest, although I have secondary research interests in combinatorial design theory and orgainsational security management. More information on my research is available here.

During my time in the Information Security Group, I developed and taught courses in Standards and Evaluation Criteria (for the M.Sc. in Information Security) and in Complexity Theory (for the M.Sc. in the Mathematics of Cryptography and Communications). I also supervised the doctoral theses of Dr. James Birkett and Dr. Wei Zhang, as well as more than thirty master's degree dissertations.


Industrial experience summary:
  • Senior Director of the Integrated Platform Security and Engineering group in Qualcomm Technologies Inc.
  • IPSE group includes team responsible for developing SOC security architecture for the next ten years.
  • IPSE group includes teams responsible for managing Qualcomm's high-value keying material and developing services to make those keys available to authorised users.
  • Consultant architect on all aspects of Qualcomm's security architecture, including secure boot, trusted execution environments, secure root of trust processors, secure debug, secure device provisioning, licensing, and others.
  • Experience in driving cross-functional teams to complete high-assurance, high-security certification requirements. Notably, chair team responsible for meeting the SAS-UP certification requirements for iSIM provisioning.
  • Experience with secure development and audit of C code.
Teaching summary:
  • Eight years experience as a lecturer in both campus-based and online teaching scenarios, including syllabus design experience.
  • Co-author of a post-graduate-level textbook on standardised cryptographic technologies.
  • Former Ph.D. students: Wei Zhang, James Birkett.
Research summary:
  • World-class researcher in mathematical cryptography with over thirty research papers published in journals and conferences (here).
  • Co-editor of a research-level textbook on signcryption technologies.
  • Extensive experience of public-key algorithm design and analysis including eight years as a UK expert on the ISO/IEC technical committee for cryptography.
  • Secondary research interest in organisational security management.
Postal address:
Qualcomm Product Security Initiative (QPSI)
5775 Morehouse Drive
San Diego, CA 92121
U.S.A.

E-mail: awdspam(at)gmail.com