Lance J. Hoffman is an emeritus professor of computer science at The George Washington University (GW). He developed the first regularly offered university course on computer security at the University of California, Berkeley in 1970.  His second book, Modern Methods for Computer Security and Privacy, published in 1977, was a standard textbook in the few computer security courses offered at the time around the world.  His other books, all anthologies, captured the state of cybersecurity and privacy at various times. 

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A Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, Dr. Hoffman institutionalized the ACM Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy.  He has served on a number of Advisory Committees for government and industry.

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Prof. Hoffman’s thought leadership has included the organizing of several projects that pushed forward emerging areas of cybersecurity over decades.   These included a 1987 workshop that was one of the first to explore issues related to Internet voting; a 1999 study of foreign encryption products that explored the effect of the United States export control regime on American and foreign manufacturers and produced his Congressional testimony and the display of an array of the products purchased at the time; a 2004 workshop that explored a National Cyber Security Exercise for Universities that  sparked several cybersecurity educational competitions; a 2010 workshop that articulated steps to insure that universities produce appropriately educated individuals for the cybersecurity workforce; and the development  of new courses as the field of cybersecurity grew, that focused on e-commerce security, information policy, and cybersecurity and governance.

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Dr. Hoffman served as thesis advisor for nine doctoral students and  project leader for a scholarship program that produced over a hundred cybersecurity experts with degrees in at least ten majors. He also serves occasionally as an expert witness.

 

Recently, Dr. Hoffman has been asked to present material on artificial intelligence and its implications.  Little did he know that while he was earning his Ph. D. in computer science at Stanford University and attending the artificial intelligence classes of one of the legendary founders of the field, Professor John McCarthy, that that knowledge would be called upon today.