David Winters, naval officer, technologist, author, and attorney at law, is most noted for his surreptitious Cold War global cyber-assault on communications espionage.
CLARKSVILLE, TN, November 08, 2019 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Marquis Who's Who, the world's premier publisher of biographical profiles, is proud to present David Winters, JD, with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. An accomplished listee, Mr. Winters celebrates many years' experience in his professional network, and has been noted for achievements, leadership qualities, and the credentials and successes he has accrued in his field. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
David Winters, naval officer, technologist, author, and attorney at law, admitted before the US Patent Bar, the Tennessee Bar, and the United States Supreme Court, is most noted for his surreptitious Cold War global cyber-assault on communications espionage. Yet his quantum leap achievement, which became a foundational United States communications doctrine under the title "Over The Air Rekey" or "OTAR", was so discreetly executed that, in the confused aftermath of the Soviet Union's sudden and unanticipated collapse, its massive security impact was initially neither fully detected nor understood as a major contributor to that Empire's demise.
A sea-going United States Navy Combat Officer, Commander Winters was ad hoc selected for extensive specialized training in telecommunications, computer, and encryption systems to meet an emergent need at the US Navy European Headquarters in London, UK. There, he oversaw satellite operations and communications security among the first of those mysterious warriors later known as "Cyber Warfare Specialists." This was, in those days, an unofficial, and ill-defined professional field with no established career path. He was a perfect fit.
There, Winters conceived and discretely introduced this revolutionary OTAR methodology and doctrine. This nullified a gaping national security vulnerability that had long been assumed insurmountable, yet was known to have resulted in the largest intelligence compromise in US history, the John Walker spy debacle. However, due to the extraordinary level of security required to achieve this advance, Winters necessarily refrained from divulging its full impact to anyone, friend or foe, alike. Instead, he independently introduced this technology while terming it merely a less expensive means of code key logistics. Therefore, it received only passing reference in contemporary official histories.
However, the Soviet Union had, over a period of decades, become fundamentally addicted to the security leaks that Winters clandestinely plugged. These security leaks resulted in a flood of intelligence that became an irreplaceable pillar of Soviet military security. When Winters halted this enormous flow, it was, for the Soviets, catastrophic. With no back-up equivalent intelligence source, there was neither sufficient time nor money for the Soviets to salvage their situation. Struggling against this concealed devastation, the USSR dissolved only a year later.
Yet, the true nature of Winters' revolution remained essentially unrecognized until its enormous impact was demonstrated through its sweepingly broad elimination of all United States code key thefts for a record period of thirty years. Only then did Winters reveal that the mysterious source of this unprecedented perfection was his technological revolutions still concealed from national bureaucracies under a mantle of mere logistical expediency.
With continued revelation of the influences that brought about the end of the Cold War, it became increasingly apparent that Winters' covert security achievement, unannounced, and unexplained, though incorporated in plain sight, inevitably exerted such ruinous damage on Soviet military budgets and intelligence operations as to make recovery essentially impossible. It was the invisible but significant straw that ultimately broke the communist camel's back.
All this was finally divulged in October 2017, before the international Symposium for Cryptologic History, sponsored by the National Security Agency at Johns Hopkins University. His innovation, OTAR, is now a corner-stone of communications security world-wide.
In recognition of outstanding contributions to his profession and the Marquis Who's Who community, David Winters, JD, has been featured on the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement website. Please visit www.ltachievers.com for more information about this honor.
He can be emailed at [email protected]
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