10 Dec Craig Newmark, Founder Of Craigslist, Named 2019 Cybersecurity Person Of The Year
Cybersecurity Ventures bestows second annual award on nerd, web pioneer, and philanthropist
– From the Editors at Cybersecurity Ventures
Sausalito, Calif. – Dec. 10, 2019
Cybersecurity Ventures announced that Craig Newmark, the iconic founder of Craigslist and Craig Newmark Philanthropies, has been named its 2019 Cybersecurity Person Of The Year.
“Over the past year, Newmark has donated millions of dollars to numerous organizations covering some of the most important initiatives around cybersecurity,” says Steve Morgan, founder and editor-in-chief for Cybersecurity Ventures. “He has contributed greatly to the advancement of women, youth, and vets in cyber, as well as academic research, election security, consumer privacy, and trustworthy journalism.
“Right now our country has a bit of a national security crisis in the sense that we don’t have enough people in cybersecurity,” Newmark told Cybercrime Magazine in an interview filmed at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) this past spring.
Newmark, 67, who resides in San Francisco, Calif., and his philanthropic organization, have recently made the following charitable contributions to organizations involved with cybersecurity and combating cybercrime:
- Nov. 21, 2019. $150,000 gift to the national nonprofit Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS) to expand its work to recruit, retain and advance women in the cybersecurity field.
- Sept. 10, 2019. $2.5M in support to the Wikimedia Foundation for security of Wikipedia and the organization’s other free knowledge projects.
- Aug. 28, 2019. $250,000 donation to the National Election Defense Coalition, a nonprofit group that focuses on making the machines that count the votes more accurate, more trustworthy and better able to resist hackers from inside or outside the country.
- Aug. 14, 2019. $1 million gift to VetsinTech, which allowed the organization to increase the number of veterans it serves through cybersecurity training each year from 100 to 300.
- Aug. 1, 2019. $400,000 gift to the Cybercrime Support Network (CSN), which will expand efforts to build a national cybercrime victim hotline.
- Jul. 25, 2019. $5 million gift to the Stanford Internet Observatory, part of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, led by computer security expert Alex Stamos, the former chief security officer at Facebook, to support the recruitment of a team of nearly a dozen people who have the skills and industry experience that are relevant to the observatory’s research goals.
- Jun. 6, 2019. $6 million gift to Consumer Reports to boost its research into the ways technology products can threaten the privacy of consumers.
- May 9, 2019. $160,000 gift to the “100 Women in 100 Days” cybersecurity career development program, to fund the first class of students.
- Apr. 9, 2019. $1 million gift to Global Cyber Alliance to help provide critical cybersecurity protections for the media and journalists, and for elections offices and community organizations as they prepare for the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
- Nov. 8, 2018. $1.6 million donation to help launch Aspen Institute Technology & Cybersecurity Policy Initiatives, aimed at educating policymakers and journalists on pressing cybersecurity challenges
Newmark, a billionaire who reached stratospheric heights in the tech industry after founding Craigslist, the world’s largest classified advertisements website, told Cybercrime Magazine that “we need to send the elevator back down” to help others.
Last year, Cybersecurity Ventures named Sylvia Acevedo, Girl Scouts of the USA CEO, its first Cybersecurity Person Of The Year.
