by Sheryl Nance-Nash
Paul Judge is the kind of guy who looks for problems to solve. He has his hands full doing his part to keep the world of computing safe as an internationally recognized authority on information security issues. Simply and humbly, Judge says he “takes on the bad guys.”
There’s no shortage of foes. “There is a set of attackers that are pretty good at what they do. They are well funded, with hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said. “They are highly skilled, and some are supported by governments. We are in a challenging arms race between good and bad. This fact keeps me going. I know I can’t take a vacation for two years because they are relentless.”
Judge is chief research officer and vice president of Barracuda Networks, which last year acquired Purewire, a leading Web security-as-a-service company that Judge founded in 2007. Barracuda Networks combines premise-based gateways and software, cloud services, and sophisticated remote support to deliver comprehensive security, networking and storage solutions. The company’s product portfolio includes offerings for protection against email, Web and IM threats, as well as products that improve application delivery and network access, message archiving, backup and data protection.
Before Purewire, Judge was chief technology officer and senior vice president at Secure Computing, where he led the technology and product strategy. In 2000, he joined the founding team of CipherTrust which became one of the fastest growing companies in North America with 300 employees and over 3000 customers in 50 countries, including half of the Fortune 500. CipherTrust was acquired by Secure Computing for $273 million in 2006. While at CipherTrust and Secure Computing, he headed the technology strategy and spent time leading research, engineering and product management. He is an inventor of about 30 patented and patent-pending computer security technologies. He also worked briefly at IBM and NASA.
Judge, author of numerous papers published in academic journals and a presenter at industry and academic conferences around the world, has won numerous awards including InfoWorld Top 25 CTOs, Atlanta Power 30 under 30, and MIT Technology Review Magazine’s 100 Top Innovators under 35. He has also spearheaded multiple research initiatives and founded the Internet Research Task Force’s Anti-Spam Research Group.
At 33, Judge has accomplished much. He remembers clearly his early fascination with computer games in high school and programming. Originally, he thought he would pursue a career as a chemical engineer, but by the time he got to college he was captivated by the internet and e-commerce. “I saw that there was going to be so much money spent on the net. The big question was how to keep that money safe?” said Judge, who got his B.S in Computer Science from Morehouse and received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Network Security from Georgia Tech.
Judge is most proud of CipherTrust. “We created something from nothing and developed a product that was used by over half of the Fortune 500 and was used in 50 countries.”
Among his many awards, he highlights the MIT Technology Review Magazine’s honor in 2003 as one of the top 100 young innovators in the world. “The [members of the] group they honored came from all areas of the world, and not just from the technology field,” he said. “There was someone doing economic reform in Africa and someone else involved in developing new drugs. I was doing anti-spam work at the time. It was particularly humbling to be among those honored,” he said.
The ever-evolving developments and trends in the world of online technology keep Judge on his toes. “With the Internet, there is something different every few months – some new application,” he said “Attackers are constantly looking for new ways to strike. In 1999 the question was how to secure movies and audio online, then it was how to secure email. The last few years have been about how to secure computers while social networking. My work is still as challenging as ever.”
Today his focus is leading the security effort for Barracuda, which has some 100,000 customers. He splits his time between the firm’s headquarters in Campbell, California and Atlanta. “I spend time with the research team looking at new viruses and how to fight them, as well as time with the data center team, dealing with bandwidth and the infrastructure side of things,” he said. Judge also works with the engineering team that builds software and deals with customers and analysts.
Judge certainly sees his job more as a mission. “For decades smart people have worked to get us to this point where we have all this technology like cell phones, laptops, and there are still so many possibilities. But there are people looking to break it all. It’s a delicate balance,” he said. “It takes a lot of effort to keep things under control on the net. For example, Spam went from being non-existent to being 90 percent of email.” Judge is compelled to stay a step ahead, if not more, of attackers. “I learned a lot of lessons. I just keep applying them to the next thing that comes along so that we will always be able to enjoy the technology that people create.”
But as hard as he works, he plays. Single with no children, he delights himself with travel, domestically, to places like Las Vegas and Miami for the weekend, and when he can spare a little more time, he jets to Paris or London. The computer buff is also into fashion. He is a partner in a clothing boutique and takes buying trips for the boutique. “I like to walk away from the tech world. Fashion helps keep me balanced,” he said. However, he’s not likely to give up being a cyber cop of sorts. He’s still in love with his first love: computers. “I’ll always be looking for problems that need to be solved and to take on risk to tackle them. I’ll build solutions and build companies around them. I expect to keep doing this,” he said. Don’t expect him to give up on the hunt or the chance to keep the Internet safe for yet another day.
