Symbiont Hires Renowned Cryptographer To Safeguard Blockchain

Smart contracts and blockchain company Symbiont has hired a renowned cryptographer to enhance the security of its technology.

The company announced Thursday (Dec. 1) that Dr. Lisa Yin has joined Symbiont as its chief security officer and chief cryptographer to develop security and privacy solutions. Yin has more than two decades of experience in security technologies and was one of three researchers able to crack the U.S. National Security Agency’s government hash standard, SHA-1.

“The Symbiont team has already solved hard problems that give its platform a competitive edge in terms of both security and performance,” Dr. Yin said in a statement. “I am very excited to join the team, and I look forward to keeping Symbiont ahead of the curve on developments in cryptography, which is a critical building block for distributed ledger technology.”

Among her other accomplishments include serving as chief editor of the first standard developed for public key cryptography, dubbed IEEE P1363, which reports said is still used as a standard for cryptography today.

“Cryptography and computer security are extremely fast-moving fields, so it is imperative to be able to take full advantage of its latest developments, to anticipate and proactively address new forms of attacks,” explained Symbiont Cofounder and CTO Adam Krellenstein in another statement. “Lisa’s deep knowledge in cryptography and her broad connections to the research community and the industry will allow us to leverage a wide spectrum of expertise in the fields.”

Earlier this year, Symbiont launched a software development kit to open its distributed ledger technology for its smart contracts platform to developers. In an interview with PYMNTS, Symbiont President and Chairman Caitlin Long highlighted the migration of blockchain technologies into the mainstream, predicting that banks will begin deploying distributed ledger-based services in 2017.