(05/2023)
Peter Thomassen works for SSE Secure Systems Engineering, a German IT Security Consultancy. He is also the founder and Chief Technology Officer of deSEC, a free, managed DNSSEC hosting platform. It is deSEC's mission to enhance the security of online data transmission, by spreading the seamless use of state-of-the-art encryption technology.
Peter has 20+ years of experience in the Internet and security industry, starting out with his web hosting company a4a (founded 2001) and later serving as an early CTO for the not-for-profit dotHIV TLD registry (2013). In 2014, Peter founded deSEC, and in 2018, he joined SSE where he worked as a Senior Security Expert in software development projects from various enterprise and public sector industries. Today, as a Senior Solutions Architect at SSE, he is an active member of the IETF with contributions to various working groups that have overlap with the DNS. He has presented on related topics at ICANN, IETF, RIPE, and DNS OARC conferences as well as the CA/B Forum. His main interests lie with security concepts that are deployable on large scale and relate to communications privacy, the key exchange problem, and efficient DNSSEC automation.
Peter holds a B.Sc. (2010, University of Würzburg, Germany) and a M.Sc. (2012, Rutgers University, USA) in physics. During the following years, he worked as a particle physics researcher at CERN, Geneva, and obtained a physics Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 2016. His research work was on extracting traces of previously unseen particles using big data samples collected at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. In 2017 and 2018, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in computer science at the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences / Free University Berlin, focusing on Identity Management issues. Today, he occasionally publishes research papers on DNS security matters.
Associated sites: https:/securesystems.de/, https:/desec.io/
Disclosure of Interest
- Please identify your current employer(s) and position(s).
- SSE – Secure Systems Engineering GmbH: Senior Solution Architect
IT Security Consultancy / Engineering company
- deSEC e.V.: Founder / Board member
Managed DNS hosting platform with DNSSEC out of the box
Secure communications protocol development
- a4a GmbH: Founder, CEO
Web hosting, e-mail
- Please identify the type(s) of work performed at #1 above.
- Advising clients about their (e.g. cloud) security posture, developing enterprise security concepts, supporting clients' development teams
- Software development, protocol development; board duties
- Systems administration, executive duties
- Please identify any board or committee positions that you hold that might be perceived as influencing your expressed point of view, irrespective of whether they are voluntary. None
- Please list any financial or other material relationship beyond de minimus stock ownership that you, your employer, or an immediate family member/significant other has with ICANN or with any individual, company, or other entity that to your knowledge has a current or planned financial or other material relationship with ICANN.
– none –
- Please list any business transactions that you, your employer, or an immediate family member/significant other has had with ICANN within the last 5 years. None
- Is your participation as an SSAC member the subject of any arrangements or agreements between you and any other group, constituency, or person(s)? Please answer "yes" or "no." If the answer is "yes," please describe the arrangements or agreements and the name of the group, constituency, or person(s).
no