Farewell to the Ranch

[cahwyguy]

About a month ago, I wrote about my upcoming retirement and why I was retiring. This last week was filled with both trepidation and anticipation. Last Wednesday, I was treated to a wonderful “farewell” party where I heard such kind words and reminisced about my career at Circle A. I also received a lovely signed photoboard that included a picture of the only building that deserved the title of A1 (unlike A9, which is really A1′). Friday, my penultimate day, cemented the fact that although the people would love me to stay, the universe thinks it is time to go. I got to work only to find that someone had moved into the space I had reserved for hoteling; in fact, that space which I had reserved for Friday and Monday as no longer available for hoteling. So I decamped to my old office (A1/3034) and was able to work there, and reserved the only hoteling space on the 2nd floor for my last day. The traffic in both directions made the commute even worse. The universe was saying, “it’s time. You gotta get out of this place.”

There’s a whiteboard outside the 3^rd floor elevators in A1′ (nee A9) where people add their “song of the day”. Most of the songs I didn’t recognize, although someone early on added Frank Mill’s Music Box Dancer. Friday I added two songs to the list: (1) The Animal’s We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, and (2) So Long, Farewell from The Sound of Music. The juxtaposition of “We gotta get out of this place / If it’s the last thing we ever do” with “So long, farewell / Auf Wiederseh’n, goodnight / I hate to go / And miss this pretty sight” truly expresses my feelings. I wonder if any of the “kids” will get it, or will have even heard from these two songs that were popular in 1965.

Which brings us to today, Monday, June 30, 2025. Today I retire from Circle A Ranch. Thoughts and memories have been running through my head over the last week, and I wanted to get them down on virtual paper. This is (essentially) the close of a 40+ year career in cybersecurity, although I’ll still be involved through ACSAC for a few more years, and might be back as a retiree casual in 2026 (as long as they don’t require a substantial on-campus presence, and primarily to support my long-term unclass project).

First, a big that you to the folks who got me started: Dr. Daniel Berry at UCLA, and Harvey Gold and Clark Weissman of SDC who saw the computer security person in me. Before they saw something, I had been doing office automation at Quadratron while finishing my MS Thesis on Email. Thank you to Allen Hansen and Jon Fellows at SDC, my management chain. Allen taught me one thing I’ll never forget: The job of a manager is to protect the people below them from the bullshit above them. Thanks to all the BLACKER Team. The close-in folks I worked with everyday: Jon, Francis Pawl, Mark Biggar, Larry Wall, Doug Rothnie, Jon King, David Golber, Tom Hinke, Paul Palmquist, Mindy Shaffer. Thanks to the folks on the Formal Methods side, working with Ina Jo: Jude Hemenway, Deb Cooper, Dan Tapper, Nancy Kelem, Sandy Romero. There was the Paoli PA group, including Doug Paul and Mary Smyrk Pennington. I also got to know people at the customer (and their contractors) who I would continue to work with: Dan Edwards, Steve LaFountain, Leslie O’Dell LaFountain, and Jerry Myers from MITRE. I made friends there who are friends to this day: Mindy Shaffer, Larry Wall, the Biggar clan (not only Mark, but Jon and Yvonne (both Z”L) and the rest of the family and extended family, including the Mangan clan as well). There were the folks I met when I moved to SD-DBMS: Louanna Notargiacomo, Robin Medlock, Jim Grey. There was Carl Sunshine of SDC R&D, to whom I submitted my resignation … and who later moved to Circle A and became my Level 4 again. From this, a lesson: Never burn bridges when you leave a company; our industry is too small. So many memories of those years: The incredibly long PDRs and CDRs; parties over at the Golbers; Bob Shapiro running a travel agency out of his office; the SDC buildings — the old 2500 building with the crappy cafeteria, Colorado Place, and lastly what was left of 2400. SDC started me on this crazy career. It also made me the Paternal Godparent of Perl, and it is why I remind people that the TCSEC (Orange Book) is responsible for the existence of Perl. Perl was written to solve a problem on the BLACKER program, which was one of the first A1 systems.

It was also during my time at SDC that I got married (although I had met my wife a few years early through CSUN and UCLA). We’re in the valley because of SDC: I was working at SDC Santa Monica on BLACKER; Karen was working at SDC Camarillo on AAS. Sepulveda, now North Hills, was in the middle.

In 1988, I came to Circle A, hired by Dr. Dixie Baker and Dr. Deborah Downs. I still remember our original department from those days, first in the corner of A8, and then later on the 5^th floor of the original (and only) A1: Dixie Baker, Deborah Downs, Jerzy Rub, Anne Lindell, Cindy Grall, Maria Pozzo King, R. Leonard Brown, Ken Elliott, Jeff Jones, Jim Donndelinger, Al Hoheb, Charlie Lavine, Jeff Thomas, Lornett Hill, Marion Lichalk. Jon King had also come over from SDC and was supporting evaluations. Of these folks, only Charlie, Jon, and Jeff (as a retiree casual) are still at Circle A. When we moved to A1, we added a section for the folks that had been doing SDVS and Formal Methods, including Mel Cutler, Beth Levy, Ivan Filippenko, Ranwa Haddad, and Leo Marcus. Back then, we were TCSD – Trusted Computer Systems Department. This reflected the change in terminology going on in the industry: We went from Computer Security → Trusted Systems → Information Assurance → Cybersecurity. It’s always been the same thing, but some names just go out of political favor. Computer Security Office (CSO) → Trusted Computer Systems Department (TCSD) → Information Assurance Technology Department (IATD) → Cyber Security Subdivision (CSS).
*: I’m doing my best to remember names. I know I’m going to forget folks, and if I forgot you, I apologize. I’ve gotten worse with names as I get older, and that doesn’t mean you weren’t important to me during my career.

Dixie also got me involved with ACSAC, where I met so many good people. I’m continuing to work with ACSAC for at least a few more years, so hopefully I’ll see folks at the conference. I’m not going to name all of the ACSAC folks — far too many.

On the 5^th floor, we added lots of folks, including Marybeth Panock who is still with the subdivision today. Folks like Michael Cole, Tim Lelesi, Donna Wheelock (who recently passed away), Melodee Lydon, Steve Cha, Dan Tapper, Anthony Clark, Anthony Choi, Kraig Meyer, Phil Porras. It was on the 5th floor that Michael Clifford came to work with us for a while, and where I got to know my dear friend Nicole Carlson. It is also where I got to know Stu Schaeffer, who I still miss to this day. Dixie left, and we gained other managers: Deborah Downs (for a while), Christine Stevens, Ranwa Haddad, and finally, Charlie Lavine. It was while we were on the 5th floor that we opened our office in Columbia MD, with Ken and Jim moving out to open that office. Others in that office whom I worked closely with were Frank Mayer, Jandria Alexander, Jerry Myers (who moved over from MITRE), Ken Stutterheim, Mario Tinto, Jeff Green, Mike Allen, John Nilles, Rosemary DeJesus.

It was also during this time that I joined a vanpool, which is what made the crazy commute tolerable. It died, alas, during COVID. I still miss my vanpooling friends: Phil Peters, Don Olsen, Don Martin, Ric Cowen, Ken Kellogg, Karen Olds, Misak Zeitilyan, Lloyd Kwok from Boeing, and Susan Braun from the Library. Phil got me involved with the California Science and Engineering Fair, where I’m still a judge to this day. We always need judges — so if you’re interested, and will be in LA during April 2026, please volunteer at Sciencefair.Space. I hope Circle A recommits to vanpools as part of their Return to Office n.0—it is vanpools that make LA’s long commutes tolerable.

We were the last folks to leave A1 before they tore the building down. We moved to the 2^nd floor of A3, primarily in the A3/2057 bay and the bay next to it. This added more folks to the department: Deb Shands, Stuart Schaeffer, Richard Yee, Richard Ma, Max Robinson, Nick Cohen, Colin Cole. For the longest time, I was apart from much of the office, first in A3/2027, and then A3/2075. During this period, folks I worked with included Marke Beaseley and Randy Blaisdell and Scott Niebuhr. It was also here that I started work on what would become CSI:53, although back then it was just a deep dive into controls — first the DIACAP controls, and then later 800-53.  It wasn’t until Dan Zink became my manager that I moved into the A3/2057 bay. There were the folks holding us together: Vivian Flores, Dot Hallberg. By this time, we had grown to a subdivision, and I no longer knew everyone in the office. I think that it was also during this time we added Meredith (Hennen) Martinez in Houston.

I supported loads of programs over the years, and even more evaluations. I certainly can’t name everyone I worked with. There were the years working on AFSCN, with folks like Wayne Sloan, Wynn Battig, Darryl Schimmelhorn, and Warren Pearce from TRW in Colorado Springs (back when it was still Falcon AFB and CSOC). There was the DSP program with Larry Zamos. There was all the work on MILSATCOM with Andy Walther. There was all the CCS-C work with Sid Hollander. There was LTRS with Wynn Battig, Amy Baxter and Joe Fatt.  My recent satellite program with Vahe, Jay Jacobs, and Amy again. I’ve taught courses for The Circle A Institute (I never got used to the University name), with the recent ones coordinated by Sam Liberto.  They are recorded if you want to see them.

On the evaluation side, there were all the good folks from MITRE Bedford and McLean, including Frank Belvin, Brett Borgeson, Brad O’Neill, Howard Wolfe, Franklin Haskell, Paul Bicknell, Patrick Mallet (now at Aerospace) and so many more. There were folks from Mitretek, like Beth Foreman, Meg Weinberg and Santosh Chokhani. There were the folks that joined the evaluation team at Aerospace later, such as Meredith, Dave Thompson, and Swapna K.. There was the team from our new partners at JHU-APL, such as Anne Gugel and her team. There were all the folks from the NCSC, first C12 then C71 and later TPEP, TTAP, and NIAP/CCEVS. All the chief evaluators, program leads, and good folks, some of whom are still friends to this day, such as Howard Holm and Jim Arnold. There are all the folks that were TPEP evaluators, many of whom went on to become CCTL evaluators, such as Tammy Compton. There are others with whom I’ve lost touch: Olin Sibert, John Wyszynsky, Kris Britton, Grant Wagner, and more. It was here I got to know folks such as Ron Ross, and all of the folks who ran things during the CCEVS era (Audry, Diane, Janine, Jon, Heather, Jade, Matt). Lots of really good folks in the evaluation community.

I should also mention, while discussing evaluations, some notable common criteria things. It was the folks at Circle A who developed a lot of the first version of the CC: I remember Olin and I working on FDP; Len Brown on FAU, and Anne Lindell working on FIA (or was it the other way around?). There was the first CC eval I validated, which was just a subroutine to set and examine the date. That’s how the first CC ST’s were. But there’s a special memory with the ESM PPs, which were just sunsetted. It was there I got to know Josh Brickman and Justin Fisher. Josh’s son lived with us a few years when he moved to LA (and I had to recuse myself from anything Oracle during that time), and it was while living with us that Nate met his future wife, Karla. They got married in December 2023. Arguably, you have the ESM PP to thank for that. The TCSEC gave us perl, and the ESM PP gave us Nate and Karla. And there are those who say product evaluation never gave us anything. To that, I say “Ha!”. Here’s a bit of CC Trivia for you: The original versions of the CC were done in Framemaker, and to get section headers and such, we had to figure out what chapter number to use to get the letters (remember A..Z, AA..AZ, …). I think I once had a perl script to do those calculations.

There are the folks that helped me with what was first called “The Exploding Tool”, and later, after a particular bidding effort, CSI:53: John Templeman, who helped with the initial servers; Anuj, who took over from John and later helped with the development of CSI:53V0 and CSI:53V1; and Brian Alfano and Mary Wang. Brian took over the server aspect and continues to do tool-side (that is, the CSI:53 application), and Mary is taking over management of the tool and continued development of the Exploding Database, now called CAFA, as I retire. There were the folks that helped with related work, such as the Space Platform Overlay, first with Randy Gabel of MITRE and the folks on the CNSS SWG, and later with Paul DeNary. There was also the interactions with the folks developing SPARTA: Brandon Bailey and Brad Roehr. For those that don’t remember, it was that bidding effort that led to Cyber becoming a subdivision so that there was org chart visibility — at first, within CCD with Bob Frueholz, the Communications and Cyber Division, and then, after a reorg, within ICSD.

When Dan Zink left, the CAVD department was broken up. Most folks in the department went to (or back to) CED (although a lot of the folks came from the original IATD); Wayne Wheeler and I went to CORD, where I worked under Tom Kogler and Chuck Allen, and got to work closely with folks like Bill Belei, Don Wonders, and Sam Liberto.  The thinking was that I would be working closely with Alex Cosby (who was then in CORD), supporting the folks in Albuquerque with the application of RMF.  That stagnated, and I then came to CED, where I was working under Ronnie Scott and Elizabeth Scruggs, and where I was reunited with a lot of folks who were in CAVD doing evaluations.

I’ve worked with many other subdivision folk. Some are no longer at Circle A: Megan Conkle, Mike Ware, Danny Lungstrom, Bill Putnam. Some still are, and I’ll miss the opportunity to work with them in the future: Seada Muhammed, Mike Quintos, Joshua Pai, Robert Lai, Jeff Defiak, Swapna K.. There’s also my fellow Circle A roadgeek, who has provided me with new information for my pages, Mike Parker. And, of course, things would have been impossible without the support of our admins over all the years, going back to Martha (I think that was her name) at SDC. I’ve named many, including Marion, Vivian, and Dot, but there was also Rosemary DeJesus and Michelle Gonser, who have been supporting me since Viv retired.

There’s a common theme in all of this: The people. What has made this career special is much less the work, and more all the wonderful and talented people I have worked with over 40+ years. I will miss working with all the folks who are still at Circle A, and the folks from our customers. I miss seeing those who have moved on to other careers, and I will always remember those whom we have lost (Len Brown, Maria Pozzo King, Stu Schaeffer, Donna Wheelock, Frank Belvin, and (alas) I’m sure others). I hope many folk will find me out on the various socials (Facebook, BlueSky, Mastodon, Dreamwidth, My Blog) and keep in touch (I’m @cahwyguy pretty much everywhere, except TikTok). It is the people I will miss. I’ll have plenty of work to keep me busy.

What work, you ask. Well, I’ve always got the highway pages and the podcast, California Highways Route by Route. I plan to do more boardgaming and walking. I plan to get back into genealogy. I plan to go to more theatre, and write more reviews. I’ve also got a big decluttering and repair list around the house. I also hope to take more time with friends.

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