Mike Brown received his MMath in Combinatorics and Optimization in 2003 under the supervision of Alfred Menezes. Mike's studies were focused on cryptography, in particular the efficient implementation of elliptic curve public-key cryptosystems and the security of padding mechanisms for RSA-based digital signature schemes.
After completing his MMath studies, Mike joined Research in Motion (RIM) as a software developer in their Cryptography Group. He was heavily involved in the development of the S/MIME Support Package for BlackBerry. Mike was a founding member of the BlackBerry Security group at RIM, and created and grew the Product Management team within it. His responsibilities included working with other product teams, customers, engineering and marketing to ensure that BlackBerry security was constantly improving.
In 2012, Mike was promoted to vice president, security product management at RIM. His team's responsibilities include understanding market requirements for security across all product lines, and leading specialty security products such as the S/MIME solution for BlackBerry, and the BlackBerry Smart Card Reader. In addition, Mike leads the Security Research Group whose mission is to understand technical threats to the platform, guide development in designing and implementing secure products, and researching new defensive countermeasures.