Information Security Corporation (ISC) is now headquartered in Oak Park, IL. Our development offices are located in Oak Park and Santa Cruz, CA. The company was founded in 1989 by Thomas Venn and Michael Markowitz to develop and market data security products based on public key cryptography. For several years ISC focused on the Federal Government market, but in the last few years has become increasingly involved in the private sector.
- Background
- History
- Management
- Jobs / Careers
- Maps & Directions
Company Background
ISC specializes in the design and development of standards-conforming conventional and public key encryption and authentication software. ISC offers implementations of all popular cryptographic algorithms including: the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the Data Encryption Standard (DES), Triple DES (TDES), the ElGamal and Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) public key cryptosystems, the NIST Digital Signature Standard (DSA), Diffie-Hellman key exchange, the NIST Secure Hash Standards (SHA-1, SHA-256/384/512), Internet MD2/MD4/MD5 message digests, IEEE 32-bit CRC, etc.
ISC's DSA, AES, TDES, DES, EES, and SHA-1 implementations have been certified by NIST for compliance with all relevant Federal Information Processing Standards. CDK 7.0, the cryptographic module on which all of our current products are based, has recently been awarded FIPS 140-1 Validation Certificate No. 347 by NIST and the Communication Security Establishment (CSE) of the Government of Canada.
ISC offers a family of shrink-wrapped security applications as well as linkable object module libraries called Cryptographic Development Kits (CDKs). The latter are available as Windows Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) or COM objects, or as object module libraries for various UNIX platforms. The CDK is also offered in the form of a CDSA 1.2 CSP for Windows NT and the HP-UX 11.0 operating system. Hewlett-Packard has licensed this CSP for redistribution to all HP-UX 11 licensees.
After several years of participation in the IEEE 1363 standards process, ISC implemented Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and currently uses it in CertAgent and SecretAgent. It is also available to developers as part of our CDKs.
A Brief Corporate History
ISC gained special recognition in the early 90's for developing the first commercial implementation of the Digital Signature and Secure Hash Algorithms (DSA/SHA). dsaSIGN, as we called this product, can be used to verify the identity of the sender of an electronic message as well to guarantee the integrity of the message content itself. The DSA and SHA have been adopted by the NIST as mandatory government standards for sender and message authentication (FIPS 186 and FIPS 180-1). Mr. Venn and Dr. Markowitz were awarded Vice President Al Gore's Hammer award for their participation in one particular GSA program (the FTS2001 bidding process) that used dsaSIGN.
The company's popular SecretAgent product débuted in 1991. The fully PKI-enabled 5.0 release became available in 1999. SecretAgent supports X.509 certificates and CRLs from a variety of commercial Certificate Authorities (CAs) and offers the latest in encryption and digital signature technology to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of your data. SecretAgent also offers an optional key recovery scheme. This product is widely used throughout the Federal government as well as by numerous Fortune 100 corporations.
In 1998, ISC was tasked by the NSA to develop the first commercial "software FORTEZZA" product, i.e., a version of SecretAgent that supported MSP version 1 certificates and used the NIST EES ("Skipjack") for bulk encryption and the DoD-classified KEA algorithm for key exchange. NSA demonstrated ISC's solution at a TechNet conference, showing it to be fully interoperable with a hardware-based system using a FORTEZZA PCMCIA card.
ISC introduced its SecurePhone product in 1999. SecurePhone allows two communicants to carry on secure, authenticated, full-duplex voice conversations over the Internet (using any existing TCP/IP stack) or over an ordinary telephone line (using a modem). CertAgent, an affordable, fully functional certificate authority software package, was release in 2001.
- Developed the smartcard-based "release authenticator"
(digital signature/validation capability) used by the Navy in
early generation releases of the NCTS GateGuard system (now
run by DISA) (GateGuard
information)
- Provided dsaSign to Lockheed for use in the protection of F-22 avionics
- Developed a custom version of SecretAgent integrated by Unisys into the FAA's AeroMedical Examiner's Program
- Participated in the FORTEZZA design process and implemented
software FORTEZZA for NSA (Litronic press
release on ISC's software FORTEZZA effort)
- Received Vice President Al Gore's Hammer Award for the GSA's
use of a token-based version of dsaSIGN in the FTS2001 Electronic
Bid Process (GSA
announcement)
- Contributed all security modules for the Key Recovery Demonstration
Projects run by both the FBI and the SBA (NIST
KRDP information)
- Developed for AT&T and Hewlett-Packard the Praesidium
CDSA 1.2 CSPs for HP-UX 11; subsequently licensed 400,000 copies to HP
- Designed and developed an S/MIME-based
NetPost Certified Electronic PostMark (EPM) client for the USPS
(USPS/AT&T/IBM
press release)
- Designed (with Booz-Allen-Hamilton), and implemented for DoD, a central key generation and private encryption key escrowing module for Netscape CMS
- Designed (with Booz-Allen-Hamilton), and implemented for the U.S. intelligence community, a utility that manages PKI credentials in a largely user-transparent manner; this utility is now sold commercially as the ISC CMU
A high technology verteran with more than thirty years of experience in office automation and computing systems, Tom Venn co-founded ISC in 1989. During his previous thirteen years with Xerox Corporation in Federal Government sales and management, he was a seven-time recipient of Xerox's highest award (President's Club) for sales achievement as a Major Account representative and as a District Systems Sales Manager.
At Xerox, Venn's responsibilities included the largest commercial and governmental accounts in the City of Chicago and the State of Wisconsin, and covered several product lines including the Memorywriter, local area networks, laser printing, personal computers, professional workstations, and word processing. Recognized as one of Xerox's most successful District Systems Sales Managers in the United States, Venn spent one year as a regional Marketing Manager for a 10 state area. As a result of these efforts, he received Xerox's Merit Achievement Award for distinguished contribution to the company.
A marketing major, Venn received a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame in 1974.
A mathematician by training, Mike Markowitz became involved in public key cryptography in the early 1980s and co-founded ISC in 1989. He has helped design and/or author most of ISC's security products, and currently leads ISC's product development team.
In the 1990s, Markowitz served on NIST's Technical Advisory Committee to Develop a Federal Information Processing Standard for the Federal Key Management Infrastructure (TACDFIPSFKMI) and was Treasurer of the IEEE P1363 Public Key Cryptography Standards Committee for several years. He is a member of the IACR, IEEE, and Phi Beta Kappa.
Markowitz received his B.S. and M.S. degrees summa cum laude from Lehigh University in 1973 and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1979. He subsequently held an assistant professorship at the University of Notre Dame, an L.E. Dickson Instructorship at the University of Chicago, an assistant professorship at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and an associate professorship at Loyola University of Chicago. His published papers are in differential geometry and general relativity, and his current interests include parabolic geometries and elliptic curves.
Roger Schlafly began his work in cryptography in 1983 and has helped design or co-author all of ISC's public key encryption products.
Although Schlafly began his research career in differential geometry, he now holds several patents in Cryptography and Computer Science. He developed the numerical solutions package Eureka for Borland (later marketed as shareware under the name Mercury) and made significant contributions to the Quattro spreadsheet program. In 1995 Schlafly and Hass announced a solution of Plateau's century-old double-bubble conjecture (AMS ERA link, American Scientist article, Ann. of Math. article).
Schlafly received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1980. He then joined the faculty of the University of Chicago as an L.E. Dickson Instructor with research interests in differential geometry and mathematical physics. Leaving academia in 1983, Schlafly spent a year at Hughes Aircraft Corporation working on air traffic control systems and then joined Borland International. He assumed his present position with ISC in 1996.
Dave DeVita's special expertise in software and technology law help ISC to remain in the forefront of the security industry.
DeVita received his B.A. from the University of Notre Dame in 1974 and his J.D. from the Ohio State University College of Law in 1978. He spent the next nine years as an Associate, then Partner, in the Cincinnati law firm of Dinsmore & Shohl. In 1987 DeVita cofounded DeVita and Howe, a general business law practice based in Cincinnati.
With more than twenty years of direct sales and sales management experience Andy McDermott has played a crucial role in the formulation of business development strategies at ISC since joining the company in 2002. He is also responsible for expanding our presence in all marketing arenas: federal/commercial and domestic/international.
Prior to joining ISC, Mr. McDermott worked as a private consultant to several SMB enterprises engaged in emerging manufacturing technologies. Mr. McDermott received a B.A. in English from the University of Notre Dame in 1974.
In 1999, Markowitz and Venn were awarded Vice President
Gore's Hammer
Award for their contributions as members of the GSA's
FTS2001 team. ISC technology allowed FTS2001 bidders to digitally
sign their proposals using smart cryptographic tokens and to submit
them electronically. This paperless process saved the government
an estimated "$1.5
million and 52,000 staff hours."
Career Opportunity - Sales Engineering
ISC is seeking candidates for a sales engineering position in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. The successful candidate will be self-motivated, capable of working independently, and must possess a strong background in enterprise software sales and IT solutions support. Knowledge of PKI, credential lifecycle management, and certificate-based encryption are plusses, as is a current DoD security clearance. After a brief training period, the successful candidate will be expected to:
- prospect new and existing accounts for a range of data security needs
- install, configure, and brief ISC products at customer locations
- handle pre-sales technical and commercial questions
This position will report to the Vice President, Sales and will have some support from an existing DC area mentor.
Career Opportunity - Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer
Date: Jan. 30, 2012
Location: Oak Park, IL
ISC is seeking candidtates for one or more quality assurance positions at our headquarters in Oak Park, IL. The successful candidate will participate in multiple QA projects serving various software development and maintenance teams. These positions will report to our QA Manager and through him to the various product development team leaders.
Job Responsibilities
- Participate in software requirements gathering as it relates to testing procedures
- Design, build, and execute manual and automated software test suites
- Enter well-documented defects into our bug tracking system (Bugzilla)
- Design and generate reports of all test results
- Participate in continuous product review efforts
- Contribute to process improvement efforts with regard to software quality
Job Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in CS, Math, or equivalent
- Strong analytical and problem solving skills and attention to detail
- Ability to identify and troubleshoot hardware and software bottlenecks
- Above average oral and written communications skills
- Comfort working in an agile, team-based environment toreach customer-driven goals
- Experience testing in Visual Studio, C++, and Java environments
- Experience in C++/Java programming or generating GUI test frameworks a plus
The following position is no longer available, but we anticipate having one or more similar positions available in 2012.
2011 Summer Internship - Information Assurance/Database Programming
ISC seeks to employ an academically superior undergraduate or graduate student (with a major in computer science, engineering, mathematics, or a physical science) as a full-time summer intern. Applicants should meet the following qualifications:
- must be a college junior or have at least college junior status
- Java JDK 1.5, JDBC, and SQL programming experience required; C++ and familiarity with the Eclipse IDE a plus
- familiarity with Oracle 11g VM, MySQL, or similar RDBMS
- knowledge of X.509 PKI and other cryptographic concepts a plus
- prefer a minimum GPA of 3.25/4.0
- U.S. citizenship is not required
Period: negotiable (approximately twelve weeks: roughly June 6 - Aug. 26)
Salary: competitive, commensurate with education level and experience
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