VP, media & security at Sony Pictures Entertainment
Corporate Distinguished Engineer, Sony
I participate in defining the digital policy ruling content protection. Furthermore, I explore new paradigms of content protection and interactivity to find solutions that satisfy both consumers’ expectations and content owners’ requirements and secure production. The hot topics are security for virtual reality, machine learning, blockchain, and fast encryption.
As a Sony Corporate Distinguished Engineer, I participate in Sony’s corporate technological strategy.
Previously, I worked at Technicolor where I defined the security solutions, such as ContentArmor, and services that may provide a competitive advantage to Technicolor. I participated to their deployment in Technicolor services and promoted these technologies to potential customers. Inside the Technicolor Security Office, I led the investigative and assessment teams.
Until 2014, I led a team of 33 international security experts for Technicolor (previously known as Thomson). The laboratories were located at Rennes (France), Hannover (Germany), and Burbank (USA). Our mission was to design the content protection solutions of the future,
secure products and services, and evaluate their level of security. Our research topics were:
- DRM for professional applications
- Audio and video watermark
- Video Fingerprint
- Secure distribution of multimedia content
- Copy protection
- Home network security
During my 25 research years, I filed more than 100 patents.
Professional activities
- Member of the editorial board of the Journal in Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques, Springer, since 2013
- Member of the Technical Program Committee of the International Conference on Networking and Services (ICNS 2015, ICNS 2016, ICNS 2017, ICNS 2018, ICNS 2019, ICNS 2020, ICNS 2021)
- Member of the Program Committee of the International Conference on Security for Information Technology and Communications (SECITC 2015, SECITC 2016, SECITC 2017, SECITC2018, SECITC2019, SECITC2020, SECITC 2021)
- Member of the Program Committee if the Symposium on Foundations and Applications of Blockchain (SCFAB18)
- Member of the Steering Committee of IEEE Workshop on catastrophic events related to Cryptography (CataCRYPT14)
- Honorary conference chair of the tenth annual conference on Privacy, Security and Trust 2012 (PST 2012)
- Lecturer (Introduction to DRM) at Université de Limoges (2010 -2013)
- Member of Program committee of international Workshop of Secure Data Management (SDM 08, SDM09, SDM10, SDM11, SDM12)
- Member of Technical Program Committee of IEEE International Workshop on Digital Rights Management Impact on Consumer Communications (CCNC 07, CCNC 08, CCNC 09, CCNC 10, CCNC 11)
- Member of Program committee of ACM Workshop on Digital Rights Management (ACM DRM 09)
- Member of Program committee of Workshop on Multimedia Security and Content Protection at ICM09
- Member of the Scientific Committee of Master 2 EEJSI (University Paris II)
- Member of the Scientific Committee of “Les rencontres du numériques de l’ANR 2013
- President of the evaluation committee of French funding program ANR INS 2012, ANR INS 2013
- VP of the evaluation committee of French funding program ANR INS 2011
- Member of the evaluation committee of French funding program ANR CONTINT 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013
- Previous Editor of Security Newsletter
Where to meet me
- Fireside chat at IoT Virtual Summit, 1-3 Dec 2020
Alumni
- The site of Marc Joye (Cryptography expert)
- The site of Patrice Auffret (Network security expert)
- The site of Jeffrey Bloom (Watermarking expert)
- The site of Nicolas Prigent (Supelec, France)
Magazines
- Misc in French, German and English
- 2600 The hacker quarterly in English
- Die Datenschleuder the Chaos Computer Club’s zine in German
About security
- Bruce Schneier’s site: Bruce is a famous advocate of our 10th law. A must to read, especially his monthly newsletter, Crypto-gram, that has a wealth of information.
Hobbies
Gastronomy, Science Fiction, and my wife’s paintings
Hi Eric,
I’m the editor of an internet + technology podcast called Reply All, out of New York City. (I’m also a former Grenoble resident, too — lived there for a semester back in 1999.) My show is working on a small tech mystery story right now about someone who has received several DMCA notices for an episode of Girls that they’ve never watched. In trying to solve this, we’re exploring how digital fingerprinting works — in this case, specific to Vobile, the company that identified the alleged infringement. I’m writing you because you’re one of the few people I’ve find who writes about this stuff and has a grasp on the technology. The thing I’m curious to understand is if it’s possible for these proprietary fingerprinting algorithms to have false positives, and if/why that might happen.
If you happen to have any thoughts on this, I’d appreciate it hugely. I’d be happy to chat on the phone at any point.
Thanks very much for your time.
Tim Howard