Bill Royds

We commemorate the passing of Bill Royds, CISSP, an honored and respected member of the CISSP community.

Bill wrote his first computer program in 1966, while on a visit to the University of Waterloo, and was hooked ever since. Studying Mathematics and Computer Science at Waterloo in the late sixties (with a minor in American political history!), Bill used to hang around the computer centre "to eagerly try all the new tools and toys. We were apprentices, not professionals, eager to learn, but not yet skilled. So, although the word hacker is mostly used in a pejorative sense now, it still originally meant a non-professional.". Back then, Bill saw himself as a bit of a hacker - in the positive sense of that word:

"My favourite hack as an undergraduate was for the opening of a new building for the newly created Mathematics faculty at the University of Waterloo.

"The past chairman and founder of the U of W math department, Ralph Stanton, was noted for his flamboyant ties (along with the rest of his lifestyle). So my friends and I (led by my girlfriend at the time), sewed together a 40 foot pink tie, which we dropped over the front of the building just as it was declared officially open.

"To this day, the symbol of a new Mathematics freshman at U of Waterloo is a pink tie, so I think it was a good hack."

However, Bill would soon get his chance to practice his professional skills.

"The first project I worked on when I started a new job after graduating from University (early 70's) was to write air traffic control software to give information to controllers about the assignment of gates to airlines, data from weather feeds and flight lists from airlines and other airports."

In the late seventies and early eighties, Bill was involved with a project to develop a language supporting provably secure programming for the US Air Force. The language, Euclid, had an associated theorem prover called Z/Eves (Z/Euclid Verification Environment System) which Bill also worked on.

Bill also worked at IP Sharp, early in his career, continuing this love affair with obscure programming languages:

"I was on the Canadian APL standards committee for a while and worked with APL daily for 10 years, so yes I DO know APL."

Bill also worked as a programmer for an agricultural research institution; his work there ranged from writing device drivers in assembly language to implementing mathematical models to test scientific theories. He also worked on an implementation of the Graphical Kernel Standard for a timesharing bureau.

Moving away from development, Bill took a position as information security manager for a Canadian government department. His work there ranged from managing firewalls and analysing their logs to development of high-level policy.

Bill was a major contributor, both to his local community and to the wider community of computer users. He actively supported community groups such as Greenspace Alliance of Canada's Capital, volunteering his technical skills to run mailing lists. He was also an enthusiastic proponent of free and open-source software, and contributed to projects such as Doxygen and Spam-Abuse. He taught a course on IT Security Principles at Algonquin College, and had also lectured in Operations Research at Carleton University.

Bill was an exceptional contributor to the CISSPforum mailing list; his extensive experience coupled with a solid academic background meant that his posts were authoritative and rarely contradicted. He often entered spirited discussions as a voice of moderation, pointing out the strengths of both sides of a debate. In other cases, he did the spadework of identifying the operators of compromised machines and domains.

Early in his career, Bill had worked for the actuarial department of a Canadian life insurance company and learned enough actuarial science to pass the first three exams. His exceptionally sophisticated understanding of statistics was the basis of many informative posts on the subject of quantitative risk assessment and its controversial cousin, "Return on Security Investment".

Bill had suffered from terminal cancer for over five years. Despite that, he continued working, most recently on an information management system for the 2010 Winter Olympics. He was also able to travel, visiting the UK in October last year and especially enjoying a trip to Bletchley Park.

We can do no better than to finish with Bill's own words, which illustrate his positive approach to life:

"It is much more enjoyable to think about interesting problems that I find on this forum than to retreat to a bed and obsess over my problems. I found that lecture by Randy Pausch very inspirational because his attitude is similar to mine. You can't change life so live it as best you can with the hand you are dealt.

"I actually have it pretty good. I live in a country where my medical bills don't bankrupt my family. I have done many of the things in life that I wanted. So I do not fear death. My main regret is not being able to contribute to the world as much as I would like to, both the infosecurity world and my community."

Bill is survived by his wife Rhoda, and his daughters Amelia, Linley and Jessica. Bill will will be fondly remembered by the CISSP community for the many contributions he made and the way he shaped our thinking.