The Beacon

Mission Specialist award winner: Stephen Orr, Cisco

by
Stephen Orr

Wi-Fi Alliance® welcomes 2020 honorees into our Wi-Fi Alliance Hall of Fame. This series highlights the companies and individuals who have brought invaluable contributions to the Wi-Fi® industry, and have demonstrated extraordinary commitment to advancing the Wi-Fi Alliance mission to “connect everyone and everything, everywhere.” Wi-Fi Alliance recognizes Hall of Fame honorees in the following categories: Industry Impact, Mission Specialist, and Quality of Service. Read more on this year’s winners.

The Mission Specialist award recognizes exemplary contributions to our mission by individuals who have, over a period of at least five years, demonstrated leadership and developed significant initiatives for Wi-Fi Alliance or the Wi-Fi industry. Awarded individuals have been involved in a range of activities outside of program development, bringing their unique subject-matter expertise to bear in contributing to the Wi-Fi Alliance mission in an impactful way.

What do you consider to be your proudest Wi-Fi accomplishment?

My proudest Wi-Fi accomplishment is the launch of WPA3™ – providing the foundation for the next generation of Wi-Fi security.

What drives you to help proliferate Wi-Fi around the world?

The need for secure connectivity, making sure that we do everything we can to provide the best Wi-Fi security available.

In your eyes, what is Wi-Fi’s biggest impact on the world?

Wi-Fi’s biggest impact is providing pervasive secure access across a range of customers from home users to enterprise. Wi-Fi connects the world and people expect secure connectivity.

"While security isn’t the coolest capability or most marketed technology, it is a fundamental underlying aspect of EVERY Wi-Fi connection that everyone expects to be there and just work. It may go unnoticed by end users, but the WPA3 brand is an evolution of how we consider Wi-Fi security."

What is one Wi-Fi technology from the Wi-Fi Alliance toolkit that you think will transform the Wi-Fi experience?

Security of course.

 

The statements and opinions by each Wi-Fi Alliance member and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions or views of Wi-Fi Alliance or any other member. Wi-Fi Alliance is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information provided by any member in posting to or commenting on this blog. Concerns should be directed to info@wi-fi.org.

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Stephen Orr

Stephen Orr is a twenty-two year veteran of Cisco and serves as a Distinguished Architect for Cisco's US Public Sector Theater where he is responsible for working with a broad range of Public Sector customers such as the DoD, Civilian, State & Local Government as well as Higher Education on Enterprise Architecture designs.  He is a leading Cisco authority on Wireless, Wireless Security, IP Mobility, IPv6, Network Service Discovery, Next Generation Encryption and complex network architecture design.