Michael Richardson is a self-taught programmer and consultant, and has been involved with network security systems since 1988. After working in nearly every aspect of Ottawa hightech, Michael was a founding employee at Milkyway Networks in 1994, and Solidum Systems Corporation in 1998. While at Milkyway Networks, Michael was responsible for developing the VPN components of the BlackHole firewall, the policy engine, and all kernel components. Solidum designed and sold hardware - IPsec being an important target. Michael is a system software designer and protocol designer. Michael is involved on a daily basis with at the IETF. He is an author on RFC3586, RFC4025 and RFC4322.

Michael was has architected a number of IPsec systems, including closed source systems at SSH, work on KAME code in BSD, and work on the Linux FreeS/WAN project. In 2003, Michael founded Xelerance Corporation to support Linux open source security products, including Openswan. In 2009, Michael joined CREDIL.org as a Founding Maker.

Michael received a B.Sc. Physics from Carleton University.