Historical Resolution Tracking Feature » Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) Member Appointments

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Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) Member Appointments


Resolution of the ICANN Board
Meeting Date: 
Thu, 22 Jul 2021
Resolution Number: 
2021.07.22.02 – 2021.07.22.03
Resolution Text: 

Whereas, the Board, at Resolution 2010.08.05.07 approved Bylaws revisions that created three-year terms for SSAC members, required staggering of terms, and obligated the SSAC Chair to recommend the reappointment of all current SSAC members to full or partial terms to implement the Bylaws revisions.

Whereas, in January 2021 the SSAC Membership Committee initiated an annual review of nine SSAC members whose terms are ending 31 December 2021 and submitted to the SSAC its recommendations for reappointments on 11 June 2021.

Whereas, on 18 June 2021, the SSAC members approved the reappointments.

Whereas, the SSAC recommends that the Board reappoint the following SSAC members to three-year terms: Jaap Akkerhuis, Patrik Fältström, Ondrej Filip, Jim Galvin, Robert Guerra, Julie Hammer, Ram Mohan, Doron Shikmoni and Suzanne Woolf.

Whereas, the SSAC Membership Committee, on behalf of the SSAC, requests that the Board should appoint Russ Housley, Jonathan Spring, and Jiankang Yao to the SSAC for terms beginning immediately upon approval of the Board and ending on 31 December 2024.

Resolved (2021.07.22.02), the Board accepts the recommendation of the SSAC and reappoints the following SSAC members to three-year terms beginning 01 January 2022 and ending 31 December 2024: Jaap Akkerhuis, Patrik Fältström, Ondrej Filip, Jim Galvin, Robert Guerra, Julie Hammer, Ram Mohan, Doron Shikmoni and Suzanne Woolf.

Resolved (2021.07.22.03), the Board appoints Russ Housley, Jonathan Spring, and Jiankang Yao to the SSAC for terms beginning immediately upon approval of the Board and ending on 31 December 2024.

Rationale for Resolution: 

The SSAC is a diverse group of individuals whose expertise in specific subject matters enables the SSAC to fulfill its role and execute its mission. Since its inception, the SSAC has invited to its membership individuals with deep knowledge and experience in technical and security areas that are critical to the security and stability of the Internet's naming and address allocation systems.

The SSAC's continued operation as a competent body is dependent on the accumulation of talented subject matter experts who have consented to volunteer their time and energies to the execution of the SSAC mission.

Russ Housley is the founder and owner of Vigil Security, LLC which provides computer and networking security consulting services. He is a recognized expert in security protocols, system engineering and system security architectures and brings significant knowledge and skills in cryptography. He has chaired the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and has authored or contributed to many Internet standards. Russ served as an SSAC endorsed member of the SSR2 Review Team from June 2018 and was appointed by the Team as its chair.

Jonathan Spring is a member of the Technical Staff, Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre (CERT/CC) of the Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. He has expertise and experience in incident response and Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) practices, network and DNS traffic analysis for detecting incidents, situational awareness for contextualizing such incidents, and vulnerability management for reducing incidents. He participates in the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) and was a SSAC Research Fellow from 2014-2016.

Jiankang Yao is a research engineer with China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC), with his main research interests including Email Address Internationalization (EAI), Internationalized Domain Names (IDN), DNS, Internet naming and addressing. He participates in IETF work, is a member of the IAB, was appointed to the ccNSO Council with effect March 2021, and serves as the Co-Secretary of the Chinese Domain Name Consortium (CDNC).

This resolution is an organizational administrative function for which no public comment is required. The appointment of SSAC members is in the public interest and in furtherance of ICANN's mission as it contributes to the commitment of the ICANN to strengthen the security, stability, and resiliency of the DNS. The appointment of SSAC members is not anticipated to have any fiscal impact on ICANN org that has not already been accounted for in the budgeted resources necessary for ongoing support of the SSAC.