James Williams Biography

Dr. Williams is perhaps best known for his authorship of A Guide to Understanding Security Modeling in Trusted Systems, which coordinates inputs from more than a 100 contributors.  At the time the Security Guide was written, models of confidentiality were far more popular than other kinds, so including the equally important subjects of integrity and availability required vigorous research and promotion.  Even within confidentiality, theorems establishing the relationship of the various models had to be developed and published before a concise presentation was possible.  SUNY’s Center for Information Forensics and Assurance includes the Security Guide in its list of classics.

The Security Guide provided a sound conceptual basis for the development of later security requirements criteria, including the Common Criteria.  Dr. Williams' contributed to the structure and terminology of this ISO standard, and to some of its new assurance requirements such as the frequently used flaw-remediation requirements.  Dr. Williams then helped demonstrate the utility of the Common Criteria by coauthoring the review of an ambitious Protection Profile written for the Federal Aviation Agency.

Following publication of the Common Criteria, Dr. Williams developed and maintained (with others) the CC Toolbox, a tool used for building “Protection Profiles” for trusted systems per the Common Criteria; a CC Profiling Knowledge Base containing generalized Protection Profile components; and Visual Basic interfaces to the CC Toolbox and to web browsers. 

Dr. Williams received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton College and his Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Berkley.  Most of his security work was performed at the MITRE Corporation for the National Security Agency.  He is currently teaching mathematics at Eastern Connecticut State University.