Stefan Brands

Stefan Brands is a cryptographer specialized in electronic cash and digital identity. He is best known for designing the protocols underlying Microsoft's U-Prove technology. Prior to Microsoft, DigiCash and Zero-Knowledge Systems implemented related protocols by Brands for anonymous electronic cash with double-spending traceability. The same protocols were implemented by large European banks and IT organizations in the CAFE and OPERA projects to test smartcard-based electronic cash. Brands has headed privacy technology start-up Credentica (2002-2008), and has been a principal architect at Microsoft Corp. (2008-2010). He has been an adjunct professor at McGill University (2000-2010) and an advisor to Canada's and Ontario's data protection commissioners (2006-2007), and serves on the advisory board of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (since 2009). Brands has extensively briefed, testified before, and provided consultancy to government organizations in North-America and Europe on privacy and security related to e-government, e-health, and national infrastructure protection.Brands obtained his PhD at Eindhoven University of Technology for his dissertation "Rethinking Public Key Infrastructures and Digital Certificates," published by MIT Press.