Howard A. Schmidt died on March 2, 2017.
He was a partner with Tom Ridge in Ridge Schmidt Cyber LLC, a consultancy company in the field of cybersecurity.
Schmidt served as the Cyber-Security Coordinator of the Obama Administration, operating in the Executive Office of the President of the United States.
Schmidt announced his retirement from that position on May 17, 2012, effective at the end of the month.
He was best known for the development of “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace”, which sought to enable private industry to create electronic identities that can be relied upon in cyberspace similar to the way that businesses rely on the combination of driver’s licenses and credit cards to authenticate identities in physical space.
Before he was apart of the Obama Administration, Schmidt served as President of the Information Security Forum and President and CEO of R & H Security Consulting LLC, which he founded in May 2005.
Schmidt was also the international president of the Information Systems Security Association and the Chairman of the board of the Finnish security company Codenomicon, the American security company Fortify Software, and the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium, commonly known as (ISC)².
During October 2008 he was named one of the 50 most influential people in business IT by readers and editors of Baseline Magazine.
He died at his home in Muskego, Wisconsin, following a long battle with cancer.
Howard Schmidt passed away at 67 years old.