Rod Beckstrom is an author, high-tech entrepreneur, and CEO and President of ICANN.

He previously served as Director of the National Cyber Security Center. Prior to that Beckstrom was Chairman and Chief Catalyst of TWIKI.NET, a company which supports TWiki, an open source wiki. He was also co-founder, Chairman and CEO of CATS Software Inc., a derivatives and risk management software company which went public on NASDAQ and later was sold to Misys PLC.

He is co-author of the best-selling book The Starfish And the Spider, which lays out a new organizational theory for considering all organizations as existing on a continuum between centralized to decentralized, with different implications and strategies for each firm based upon their position on that axis. In interviews with The Washington Post^[1] and USA Today,^[2] Beckstrom explains how, using the 'Starfish' concept illustrated in The Starfish And the Spider, the U.S. Government can take a different approach in their dealings with Al-Qaeda. Mr. Beckstrom is also the formulator of an economic model for valuing networks, Beckstrom's law, which was presented at BlackHat 2009 and Defcon 2009.

An active participant in the non-profit arena, Beckstrom serves on the board of trustees of Environmental Defense Fund, an organization involved in designing, advocating and implementing environmental policy solutions such as the Kyoto Protocol and the California Climate Act. He is also a trustee of Jamii Bora Trust, a micro-lending group with 170,000 members, based in Nairobi.

Beckstrom, a pioneer in the field of derivatives trading and firm-wide risk management, was coached by Nobel Laureate Dr. William F. Sharpe, which resulted in the first book on a new theory, "Value at Risk."

In August 2007, Beckstrom and Peter Thoeny, author of TWiki co-launched TWIKI.NET, a new Web 2.0 company.

On March 20, 2008, Beckstrom was appointed to run the newly created National Cyber Security Center,^[3] a position requiring "advanced thought leadership in areas like coordination, collaboration and team work in order to best serve the mission".^[4][5][6]

Rod received his BA with Honors and Distinction and an MBA from Stanford University, where he served as the Chairman of the Council of Presidents of the Associated Students of Stanford University.

Resignation from NCSC

On March 5, 2009, less than a year after the position was created, he stated that he would resign as the Director of the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) on Friday, March 13, 2009.^[7] He has recommended the Deputy Director Mary Ellen Seale as his successor.^[7] He stated that a lack of cooperation from the NSA and insufficient funding led to his resignation.^{[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]} He stated that he received $500,000 which funded five weeks of operation.^[20][21] He has stated that he supports a more decentralized approach and opposes the NSA's move to try to "rule over" the NCSC.^[18][22]

Presidency of ICANN

On 25 June 2009, at its 35th meeting in Sydney, Australia, the Board of ICANN resolved to appoint Rod Beckstrom as its CEO and President.^[23] At ICANN, he has presided over a number of notable developments, including the July 15, 2010 DNSSEC signing of the DNS root, and the June 20, 2011 opening of the gTLD namespace to additional applicants.^[24] He announced his resignation, effective July 1, 2012, on August 16, 2011.

He announced his departure from ICANN in a Twitter message on 17 August 2011.

References

External links

• Discussion of Beckstrom's NCSC appointment, at Shepherd's Pi
• TWIKI.NET
• USA Today article
• New Yorker article on Jamii Bora October 30, 2006