Alex Stamos


Alex Stamos is a computer scientist and adjunct professor at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is the former chief security officer at Facebook. His planned departure from the company, following disagreement with other executives about how to address the Russian government's use of its platform to spread disinformation during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, was reported in March 2018.

Early life

Stamos grew up in Fair Oaks, California and graduated from Bella Vista High School in 1997. Stamos attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he graduated in 2001 with a degree in EECS.

Career

Stamos began his career at Loudcloud and, later, as a security consultant at @stake.

iSEC Partners

In 2004, Stamos co-founded iSEC Partners, a security consulting firm, with Joel Wallenstrom, Himanshu Dwivedi, Jesse Burns and Scott Stender. During his time at iSEC Partners, Stamos was well known for his research publications on vulnerabilities in forensics software and MacOS, Operation Aurora, and security ethics in the post-Snowden era.
Stamos was an expert witness for a number of cases involving digital privacy, encryption, and free speech:
iSEC Partners was acquired by NCC Group in 2010.

Artemis Internet

Following the acquisition of iSEC Partners by NCC Group, Stamos became the CTO of Artemis Internet, an internal startup at NCC Group. Artemis Internet petitioned ICANN to host a '.secure' gTLD on which all services would be required to meet minimum security standards Artemis ultimately acquired the right to operate the '.trust' gTLD from Deutsche Post to launch its services.
Stamos filed and received five patents for his work at Artemis Internet.

Yahoo!

In 2014, Stamos joined Yahoo! as CSO. While at Yahoo!, he testified to Congress on online advertising and its impact on computer security and data privacy. He publicly challenged NSA Director Michael S. Rogers on the subject of encryption backdoors in February 2015 at a cybersecurity conference hosted by New America. He resigned in June 2015 in response to a then-undisclosed program to scan incoming email on behalf of United States government intelligence agencies.

Facebook

In 2015, Stamos joined Facebook as CSO. During his time at Facebook, Stamos co-authored a paper on the use of social media to attack elections. He later delivered a keynote address at the Black Hat Briefings in 2017 on the need to broaden the definition of security and diversify the cybersecurity industry.
in February 2018
Following disagreement with other executives about how to address the Russian government's use of its platform to spread disinformation during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, he made plans in 2018 to leave the company to take a research professorship at Stanford University.

Stanford University

, Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation lists Stamos as an adjunct professor, visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, and director of the Stanford Internet Observatory.

Patents