[Mitkc-announce] MIT wins prestigious award for Kerberos work

[Stephen C. Buckley]

MIT has been awarded the Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration in  
recognition of the Institute's 20 years of work on developing and  
supporting Kerberos, the world's most widely used authentication  
system for computer networks.

Vinton Cerf, chief evangelist at Google and one of the original  
pioneers of the Internet, presented the award on behalf of the Andrew  
W. Mellon Foundation during a Dec. 8 ceremony in Washington.  Dan  
Geer, one of the original architects of Kerberos, Tom Yu, MIT  
Kerberos Development Manager, Jerrold Grochow, Vice President of  
Information Services and Technology, and myself were present to  
accept the award.

"MIT's contribution of Kerberos to the higher-education community may  
rank as the most successful such donation in history," Cerf said.  
"Kerberos is used hundreds of millions of times daily, in all Windows  
computers and thousands of higher-education institutions worldwide.  
In selecting MIT for this award for Kerberos, our committee noted  
MIT's long-term support of the project, as well as their exemplary  
record of supporting others who wish to use Kerberos."

Kerberos was invented in the 1980s as part of Project Athena, led by  
Professor Steven Lerman, now MIT's vice chancellor and dean for  
graduate education, and by Professor Emeritus Jerry Saltzer, and has  
been maintained and expanded by the team in Information Services and  
Technology under Vice President Jerrold Grochow.

In 2007, MIT formed the Kerberos Consortium and charged it with the  
mission of establishing Kerberos as the universal authentication  
system for the world's computer networks. The consortium now includes  
20 Founding Sponsors, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sun, the  
Department of Defense, NASA, other corporate organizations, and 10  
other universities.

The Kerberos Consortium will use the $100,000 in award proceeds  
toward further improving the interoperability of Kerberos across a  
multiplicity of platforms and devices.

The Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration comes in two levels,  
$50,000 and $100,000. Winners of the $100,000 awards are chosen for  
having distinguished themselves by demonstrating extraordinary  
leadership, usually over an extended period of time, of one or more  
projects.

This year, two institutions received $100,000 awards, while nine  
received $50,000.

Please join me in congratulating all those, past and present, on this  
acknowledgment of their contribution to the creation and evolution of  
Kerberos.

Kind regards,

s

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Stephen C. Buckley
Executive Director
MIT Kerberos Consortium
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
http://www.kerberos.org
  + 1 617.324.9167

Note: I never BCC anyone.






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