Shawn Wells
This Rising Star wrote a guide for the Security Content Automation Protocol that opened the door for federal agencies to adopt cloud-based solutions securely.
When Shawn Wells, director of innovation programs for Red Hat's U.S. public-sector group, wrote a security guide for the open-source Security Content Automation Protocol, he was moving forward on an idea that most people weren't even talking about yet.
"SCAP was just a thought in many people's minds before he brought it into the community," said Lynne Chamberlin, vice president of business development for Red Hat's public-sector group.
The Defense Department, National Security Agency, General Services Administration and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency have looked to the SCAP guide in their policies (including FedRAMP), and the Defense Information Systems Agency used it in its Security Technical Implementation Guides.
Today more than 1.6 million lines of code have been contributed to SCAP, and Wells is known as the guy who opened the door for many federal agencies to adopt cloud-based solutions securely.
"He can be with the top executives of these companies and speak at a level that they understand, and he can also roll up his sleeves and get into the minutia and code," Chamberlin said.
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