SOUTHFIELD — Dug Song has been named Leader and Innovator of the Year by Lawrence Technological University, the eighth person named to the annual award developed by Lawrence Tech to recognize Michigan business executives that demonstrate superior skills in leading the top industries that are key to Michigan’s economic future.
Song, CEO and co-founder of Ann Arbor-based Duo Security,
was chosen from more than 40 nominees for his numerous
significant contributions to the information security industry.
Song has a long history of creating successful products and
leading successful companies that solve information security problems. Currently, Song leads Duo Security, an information security company that provides a cloud-based two-factor authentication system for organizations of all sizes
worldwide. Using innovative technology, Duo Security
authentication effectively protects against account takeover while
providing a simple, natural user experience.
Privately held Duo Security’s investors include Google Ventures,
True Ventures, Resonant Venture Partners, and Radar Partners.
Song co-founded Duo Security after spending seven years as
chief security architect at Arbor Networks, a company founded in
Ann Arbor in 2000 built on security research conducted at the
University of Michigan that was eventually funded by the U.S.
Defense Agency Research Projects Administration (DARPA).
Song is also recognized for building the first commercial network
anomaly detection system that was acquired by NFR Security, a
leader in real-time threat prevention (acquired by Check Point
Software Technologies). And before that, he managed security in
the world’s largest production environment of the Kerberos
security system — a network authentication protocol that works on
the basis of ‘tickets’ to allow nodes communicating over a non-
secure network to prove their identity to one another securely —
at the University of Michigan.
More of Song’s contributions to the security community include
popular open source (OpenSSH, libdnet, dsniff), distributed
filesystem (NFSv4) and operating system (OpenBSD) projects.
He also co-founded the USENIX Workshop On Offensive
Technologies (WOOT).
More about Song’s current company at www.duosecurity.com.
Lawrence Tech and WWJ Newsradio 950 spotlight a business leader and innovator every Wednesday at www.ltu.edu/leaders. The winners are chosen from public nominations; visit the website to make a nomination.