Meet The Agorics Executive Staff

Linda Vetter, President, oversees much of the daily corporate activities and deliverables. She additionally manages the major consulting projects for Agorics, including significant direct contribution in architecture and security model aspects of enterprise security projects. Ms. Vetter managed internal security software development and integration teams within the U.S. Navy and General Motors for over 10 years, prior to spending 20 years in senior positions at software vendors, including three start-up computer security companies. Between start-ups, Ms. Vetter spent over 6 years at Oracle, where she first established a new business unit for the design, development and delivery of Trusted Oracle7, then became Vice President of Product Management for the Server Technologies Division with over $1 billion/year in license revenue. She was also an officer and Senior Vice President of R & D for Walker Interactive Services, before joining Agorics five years ago. From 1995-2000 Ms. Vetter also served as one of only four industry expert representatives appointed to the US Federal government's "Computer Systems Security and Privacy Advisory Board," established by the Computer Security Act of 1987. Ms. Vetter has managed nearly a dozen governmental security evaluations of multiple operating system, network, and database security products through US (e.g., Orange Book, Lavender Book) and international (Common Criteria) processes.

Ann Hardy, Chairman of the Board of Agorics, pioneered the concept of shared, network-based computing that is now commonly recognized as the Internet paradigm. The basis of this work was accomplished in the late 1970s at Tymshare, where Ms. Hardy was a vice president for ten years. In that capacity, she managed a group that used the model known today as "thin client" to develop one of the first workable methodologies for electronic business applications such as home banking, on-line bill paying, and airline reservations. This achievement was based on Tymshare's revolutionary operating system, written by Ms. Hardy, which produced 19 years of revenue resulting in a $300 million company by 1980. Ms. Hardy then added the technical and managerial experience gained at Tymshare to her IBM, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and National Security Agency (NSA) background to found Key Logic, which provided reliable operating systems to mainframe computer manufacturers. Key Logic was profitable in its first full year of operation, generating more than $1 million in revenue.

Today, Ms. Hardy is the founder and driving spirit of a unique consulting and product company that boasts one of the strongest teams in Silicon Valley. Under Ms. Hardy's leadership this team has remained in place since the company was founded in 1994, while other start-up and consulting companies commonly see extensive turnover. The team is now leveraging eight years of success with mission-critical electronic commerce projects primarily for Fortune 100 corporations into the area of open systems security, in which Ms. Hardy's broad repertoire of expertise gives her exceptional insight.

Norman Hardy, Principal Architect, is a recognized authority on communication, security, and operating systems technologies. His work at Agorics has included participation in the design of GuardOS, the electronic check project, the WebMart project and GuardPoste. This work has led to seven patents in the areas of electronic commerce and security. Mr. Hardy was the architect for KeyKOS, a portable micro-kernel operating system providing the architecture for security, robust availability, efficient hosting of other operating systems, persistent virtual memory, and resource accounting. KeyKOS was recommended by the NCSC for a B3 security rating. Mr. Hardy was awarded a software security patent in 1985 for the security technology implemented in KeyKOS. Mr. Hardy was co-architect of Tymnet, the first and largest private, packet-switch network, now owned and operated by British Telecom. He has also worked with IBM and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Chris Hibbert, Development Manager, has led multiple key projects since joining Agorics in 1994, and is currently Chief Architect and development manager for Agorics' GuardPoste secure email server product. His Agorics' work related to FSTC (Financial Services Technology Consortium) projects included Chief Architect and team lead for e-check, a collaborative project that leveraged cryptographic techniques to securely deliver digitally signed electronic checks using email. Besides the development at Agorics of the bank server for e-check, this project also involved significant interaction by Mr. Hibbert with IBM, smart card vendors, major banks and other FSTC members while providing major contributions to the development of detailed specifications and interoperability standards. Mr. Hibbert also performs training and mentoring on object oriented programming, coding standards, and other aspects of software engineering, and is co-inventor of several patents. Prior to Agorics he spent 4 years at Xerox PARC, followed by work at DEC's Western Software Lab and Autodesk. Mr. Hibbert is also on the Board and Executive Committees of two non-profit organizations, and is a nationally recognized expert on Social Security Numbers and privacy.

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