Born in Hamburg in 1973, I was raised and went to school in my home city. After my course of studies in Wedel, returned to Hamburg in early 2000.
In addition to the computer-based hobbies listed below, I am practicing martial arts and have a good educational background including diverse topics such as linguistics, quantum mechanics, politics and psychology.
I am currently the CEO of Calitarus GmbH.
I have been using computers for about 30 years, starting with a C64 and moving to the PC platform during my final school years. My interest in computer security started very early and has since branched out into the areas of compliance, information security management and risk management.
Aside from my native german, I have a solid command of the english language,
and have held presentations in it. I have also taught english for
beginners.
In summer of 2002, I learned basics in french during a two week "crash"
language course in preparations of a holiday in France.
In early 1999, I was involved in the High-Availability Linux Project, which aims to bring HA capabilities to Linux systems. I wrote a proof-of-concept code named Heart which provided the initial ethernet heartbeat code for the project (which is still in use today, though in an updated form).
During later years, I have become more and more active in the security community, including a strong interest in Security Enhanced Linux, where I have contributed several policies, as well as making many proposals which have been accepted into the upstream code. I have also written patches for third party programs such as wdm and worked with the developers to have them integrated.
As a result of my security research, I have published several papers and
articles(1) and have given numerous
speeches at conferences and trade fairs(2),
both in german and english. Some of my work has even been translated to
japanese and published in Japan. I have also been an expert reviewer for
scientific articles, on invitation of the respective magazine editors.
I have given courses in Linux basics and advanced courses in NSAs Security Enhanced Linux. Former employers have remarked on my skill of presenting complicated issues in a readily digestible form and teaching them to others.
I have been active with the cypherpunks and in cryptography as well and
spent time working on the creation of a european civil liberties organisation.
I've worked with John Gilmore of EFF and
Andy Mueller-Maguhn, european ICANN representative during those times, though
I am not involved in the organisation finally created, EDRI.
Away from work, I have an active interest in computer game development and have created several successful online games. I also participated as beta-tester in the development of numerous commercial games, including AAA titles.
Since 2003, I have continously improved my communications and negotiations
skills, inluding rhetorics, leadership training as well as NLP and even
(therapeutical) hypnosis.
As chairman of the Works Council, I have also gathered experience in team
leadership and organisation.
In my work I differentiate clearly between hacks or temporary solutions and
professional results. I am a master of hacks, widely admired for my ability
to find a workable solution to virtually any problem. On the other hand, I
have very high quality standards for any work intended to be part of a
professional solution. I believe in repeatability, maturity and robustness,
and continuously aim for these. I am also a strong proponent of evidence-based
approaches and pragmatic solutions.
To satisfy my curiosity, I also find myself more interested in problem-solving
than in routine maintainance, and any necessary routine jobs quickly find
themselves automated.
You can reach me at my private e-mail address tom@lemuria.org, or my business address vogt@calitarus.de, both of which I usually check several times a day.
I am available for speeches and lectures if given enough time to prepare and plan the event into my schedule.