Monday, November 15, 2010

Tribute to Software Security Guru Roman Hustad

Roman Hustad, OWASP chapter leader in Sacramento, CA, died suddenly on November 4th at the age of 39, the result a fatal heart rythm caused by an enlargement of his heart, the cause of which is still unknown. He collapsed after arriving in the Las Vegas airport that evening.  Roman suffered virtually no pain and was surrounded by others. 

Roman is survived by his wife of 6+ years, Tanya (Burgdorf) Hustad, and his sons Lucas (4 yrs old) and Wyatt (2 yrs old), his sister Holly (Fail) Hoeksema, and brother, Andrew James. The whole family is being supported and cared for by loving family and friends in Davis, CA at the moment.

This is also a big loss for OWASP and the appsec security community. I've known Roman as a former colleague at Foundstone and I worked with him at a four month software security gig for a financial client in Orange County, CA in 2006.

Roman was a person of high professional standards, strong integrity generosity and ethical values. Professionally, he was a top notch principal software security consultant and one of the best if not the best JAVA security trainer that I ever known. After I left Foundstone in 2007, I regret that I did not kept in touch with him. I will always remember him as one of the best software security consultants I had the pleasure to work with.

As a tribute to Roman published work I have provided some references herein.

Hacme Books vs 2.0 Strategic Secure Software Training Application http://www.foundstone.com/us/resources/whitepapers/hacmebooks_userguide2.pdf

Papers on SoftwareMag.com, such as:
 "Implementing a Software Security Training Program" http://www.softwaremag.com/L.cfm?doc=1174-10/2008
"Holistic Approach for Secure Software" http://www.softwaremag.com/L.cfm?doc=1155-8/2008

Roman also published a paper for ISSA Journal, on "How virtualization affects PCI-DSS, A review of Top 5 Issues": https://dev.issa.org/Library/Journals/2010/January/Hau-How%20Virtualization%20Affects%20PCI%20DSS.pdf

1 comment:

JB said...

Thank you for this very befitting tribute.

I had the pleasure of working with Roman in the late 90's/early 00's, and am a better person for the experience.

We had kept in touch over the past decade, and his joy for life, fondness for learning, and adoration of loved ones never ceased to amaze me.

The world has lost a great man. My deepest sympathies go out to his wife, young sons, and extended family. I hope they can be comforted by an unending font of warm memories, and the knowledge that they filled his heart & inspired his smile.