4/27/2022

Frederick Kautz Joins TestifySec as Senior VP of Engineering

Author: Cole Kennedy

Picture of Frederick from Testifysec
Today we announced that cloud native / zero trust expert Frederick Kautz is joining TestifySec in the role of Senior Vice President of Engineering. Fred comes to the company with two decades of technical leadership roles in industry - at Anthem, Red Hat and GridX - and extensive participation in and commitership for key cloud and security projects under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and the Linux Foundation.
Fred is known for the Kautz Triangle (and for many other technical achievements - see below). The Triangle illustrates the tension among the elements of authentication: Identify, Policy and Control, often cited in advocating Zero Trust Architecture, in which Kautz is expert.

More broadly, Kautz brings TestifySec deep experience in building and running technical product and platform teams focused on infrastructure, Zero Trust, networking, and storage.
We were very impressed with Fred’s expertise in guiding organizations through Cloud Native and Zero Trust implementations while meeting or exceeding regulatory requirements. His keen eye for identifying and filling gaps in technology stacks and formulating novel solutions, especially in for and with open source software, makes him perfect to drive development of TestifySec Witness and key projects like in-toto and SPIFFE SPIRE.

Fred's Background

Fred’s career covers a lot of ground. The most notable highlights are
  • Delivered over 30 presentations at major industry conferences in the past 5 years on a wide variety of topics including networking, cloud native, AI, and security.
  • Created the first definition of a Cloud-Native Network Function (CNF), enabling launch of the CNCF Telecom User Group and CNF Working Group.
  • Co-authored the seminal white-paper focusing on what Cloud-Native Network Functions.
  • Co-founded Network Service Mesh, an L2/L3 service mesh built on Cloud-Native principles to streamline heterogeneous network configurations.
  • Created the Red Hat Container Storage Engine.
  • Made key prerelease contributions to Docker, with a focus on networking strategy.
  • Provided leadership and/or technical guidance in OSS projects SPFFE/SPIRE, CNCF Network Service Mesh, GitBom, CNCF Security TAG, CNCF CNF WG, CNCF Telecom User Group, and IEEE INGR Edge Services WG.
  • Sat on the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Committee on Public Health.
Frederick holds a masters degree in software engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and a computer science degree from the University of Texas at El Paso.