Staff Page - Dan Thomsen

Mr. Dan Thomsen received an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. Mr. Thomsen’s career has focused on computer security research ranging from high assurance operating systems, multilevel database security, and security policy management. Mr. Thomsen has also contributed research into the effective communication of ideas from one person to another. At SIFT Mr. Thomsen works to improve the effectiveness of computer security using artificial intelligence and human factors research to manage the complexity of modern computer security mechanisms.

Security policy management specification and translation to enforcement mechanisms.

Mr. Thomsen recently lead research into tools to create security enforcement policy that spans all the enterprise’s security mechanisms. The program successfully created security policy specifications that could be shared like open source software and automatically translated to a variety of enforcement mechanisms.

Working on a DARPA program to explore alternatives to PowerPoint, Mr. Thomsen developed a complete workflow for creating more effective presentations and designed cognitive transformations improved the audience’s ability to infer information from the presentation.

Mr. Thomsen focuses on turning research ideas into working prototypes that validate the key innovations of the approach. Mr. Thomsen has published over twenty-five technical papers on computer security topics; including security policy management and design patterns for computer security. Mr. Thomsen has been the conference and program chair for the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC). Mr. Thomsen has been involved in international conferences by being on the program committee for several conferences and workshops including: ESORICS, SPatterns, and IFIP 11.3 Data and Applications. Mr. Thomsen has participated in twelve different National Science Foundation panels to evaluate proposals on computer security research. He is a senior member of IEEE.