Schmidt, Howard, 1949-2017

Howard Anthony Schmidt (October 5, 1949 – March 2, 2017) was a partner with Tom Ridge in Ridge Schmidt Cyber LLC, a consultancy company in the field of cybersecurity. He was the Cyber-Security Coordinator of the Obama Administration, operating in the Executive Office of the President of the United States. He announced his retirement from that position on May 17, 2012, effective at the end of the month.

One of Schmidt's leading policy objectives was the development of "National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace", which sought to enable private industry to create electronic identities that can be relied upon in cyberspace similar to the way that businesses rely on the combination of driver's licenses and credit cards to authenticate identities in physical space.

Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Schmidt served as President of the Information Security Forum and President and CEO of R & H Security Consulting LLC, which he founded in May 2005. He was also the international president of the Information Systems Security Association and the Chairman of the board of the Finnish security company Codenomicon, the American security company Fortify Software, and the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium, commonly known as (ISC)². In October 2008 he was named one of the 50 most influential people in business IT by readers and editors of Baseline Magazine.

Schmidt died of brain cancer on March 2, 2017, at his home in Muskego, Wisconsin.