Taher Elgamal
Taher A. Elgamal | |
|---|---|
Taher A. Elgamal (2010) | |
| Born | 18 August 1955 Cairo, Egypt |
| Nationality | American, Egyptian |
| Alma mater | Cairo University (BSc) Stanford University (MS, PhD) |
| Known for | SSL Public-key ElGamal Discrete logarithm cryptography |
| Awards | RSA Conference Lifetime Achievement Award (2009) Marconi Prize (2019) National Academy of Engineering (2022) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Cryptography |
| Institutions | Salesforce.com |
| Doctoral advisor | Martin Hellman |
Taher Elgamal (Arabic: طاهر الجمل) (born 18 August 1955) is an Egyptian-American cryptographer and tech executive. Since January 2023, he has been a partner at venture capital firm Evolution Equity Partners. Prior to that, he was the founder and CEO of Securify and the director of engineering at RSA Security. From 1995 to 1998, he was the chief scientist at Netscape Communications. From 2013 to 2023, he served as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Security at Salesforce.
Elgamal's 1985 paper entitled "A Public Key Cryptosystem and A Signature Scheme Based on Discrete Logarithms" proposed the design of the ElGamal discrete log cryptosystem and of the ElGamal signature scheme. The latter scheme became the basis for Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) adopted by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as the Digital Signature Standard (DSS). His development of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) cryptographic protocol at Netscape in the 1990s was also the basis for the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and HTTPS Internet protocols.