Paul Carl Kocher

Kocher was awarded the 2019 Marconi Prize with Taher Elgamal for architecting the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 3.0/Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0 protocol, a cryptographic protocol for secure communications on the Internet.

Kocher and Taher Elgamal were jointly awarded the 2019 Marconi Prize for "their development of SSL/TLS and other contributions to the security of communications".

In 2018, Kocher was named a Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research for "fundamental contributions to the study of side-channel attacks and countermeasures, cryptography in practice, and for service to the IACR."

Kocher was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2009 for his contributions to cryptography and Internet security. He serves on the National Academies' Forum on Cyber Resilience.

Kocher grew up in Oregon. He received a bachelor's degree in biology from Stanford University in 1995, where he worked part-time with Martin Hellman. According to Hellman, Kocher is mostly self-taught in cryptography and already knew an amazing amount when they first met in Kocher's sophomore year. As demand for Kocher's knowledge in cryptography escalated, he gave up on his original plan to become a veterinarian and founded CRI instead.

Paul Carl Kocher (born June 11, 1973) is an American cryptographer and cryptography entrepreneur who founded Cryptography Research, Inc. (CRI) and served as its president and chief scientist.