It’s with great pride that we announce our colleague Mike Ounsworth has been named an award finalist in the Microsoft Security Excellence Awards 2023 in the category of Security Changemaker.

Mike Ounsworth headshot image

This is the fourth year Microsoft is recognizing partners for their outstanding work in the security landscape. All finalists are members of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA), an ecosystem of independent software vendors and managed security service providers that have integrated their security products and services with Microsoft’s security technology. Entrust has been a member of MISA since its inception.

Mike was nominated in the category of Security Changemaker for his leading role in creating the post-quantum cryptography standards that are the future of data protection. The migration to Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) is an industry-wide challenge and Mike’s leadership, collaboration and contributions to the research and development of standards, which will help the industry meet this challenge head on.

Entrust provides a variety of cryptographic mechanisms to support a range of Post Quantum Cryptography migration strategies because we recognize different environments may require different approaches for a successful migration. With strong support from Entrust’s Research and Development team, Mike is pushing for the development of multiple forms of Post Quantum and traditional hybrid techniques to enhance security and migration flexibility. In partnership with leaders in the IETF and academic crypto communities, he has worked to integrate PQC into IETF Internet Protocols with a specific focus on X.509 PKI infrastructure. He has collaborated on academic research with the universities of Ottawa, Waterloo, Calgary, Bochum, as well as Microsoft Security Research. All of this work will help Microsoft customers migrate to PQC more smoothly and provide them with future flexibility in their choice of algorithms.

Voting to select the winners in each category is open now through March 22 and is only open to MISA members and Microsoft staff. Help us recognize Mike’s vital role by voting for him and nominees in other categories here.