For Paul Judge, It’s All About Information Security
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.
