Robert C. Seacord
Secure Coding Team Lead

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Key responsibilities

I lead the secure coding initiative, including the development of secure coding standards for C, C++, and Java.

I am the author of four books in the SEI series including The CERT C Secure Coding Standard and Secure Coding in C and C++.

Professional Background

Seacord has over 25 years of software development experience in industry, defense, and research. Seacord's principal areas of expertise include software security, C, C++, and Java-programming languages, component-based development, graphical interface design, human factors. He has worked extensively with EJB, CORBA, JavaBeans, UNIX, Motif, the Common Desktop Environment (CDE), and other graphical user interface systems and technologies.

Seacord was a developer of Version 2.1 of CDE and Motif at the X Consortium. He was responsible for the addition of the printing-through-X capability and desktop integration for the Information Manager. Information Manager is a generalized SGML browser and new CDE 2.1 client. Seacord was also responsible for maintaining the overall quality and integrity of UIL, Mrm, Application Builder, and other CDE desktop libraries and clients. He was also responsible for the resolution of CDE 2.1 source code portability problems on the 6 CDE reference platforms: AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Digital UNIX, UnixWare and UXP/DS.

Seacord was previously a Member of the Technical Staff in the User Interface Project at the SEI. From 1987 to 1991, he was a principal architect and implementor of the Serpent User Interface Management System (UIMS) for Motif and UNIX developed at CMU. Serpent was a successful research project that demonstrated a means of separating application concerns from user interface design. While employed at the SEI, he served as Chairman of the IEEE P1201.3 Working Group on User Interface Management Systems.

Before joining the SEI (the first time), Seacord worked in the areas of software engineering, processor development and communications at IBM.

Publications (recent or significant)

• Robert C. Seacord. The CERT C Secure Coding Standard. Addison-Wesley. October 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-321-56321-7.
  
• Robert C. Seacord. Secure Coding in C and C++. Addison-Wesley. September 2005. ISBN: 0321335724.
• Robert C. Seacord, Daniel Plakosh, Grace A. Lewis, Modernizing Legacy Systems: Software Technologies, Engineering Processes, and Business Practices, Addison-Wesley, February 2003.
• Kurt C. Wallnau, Scott A. Hissam, Robert C. Seacord, Building Systems from Commercial Components, Addison-Wesley, June 2001, ISBN: 0201700646.
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Education

• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, BS in Computer Science, Dec. 1983.
• Carnegie-Mellon University, Post-Graduate Courses in Software Design, Creation & Maintenance, User Interfaces, Software Project Management, Formal Methods, Human Factors, Operating Systems & Entrepreneurship.

Professional Memberships and Activities

• CMU Representative for INCITS PL22 - U.S. Tag to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22
• PL22 Liaison to CS1 - Cyber Security
• CMU Representative to INCITS PL22.11 - Programming Language C
  
• Technical Expert to the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG14 - The International Standardization Working Group for the Programming Language C
• Technical Expert to the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG23 - Programming Language Vulnerabilities
• Project Editor WG14 C - Secure Coding Guidelines Study Group
• Technical Expert to the JTC1/SC7 - Embedded System Coding Guidelines Study Group