NordVPN has announced a new strategic partnership with web security expert Troy Hunt who is also the creator of the website HaveIBeenPwned.
Hunt will be the first member of a team of advisers who will share their expertise and provide guidance on the VPN company's security and commercial practices. The move is part of NordVPN and its parent company NordSec's push to move beyond its VPN roots and become a major player in the security industry as seen with its recent launch of NordPass.
The company's international team of advisers will be made up of professionals from different fields and will include technology specialists, scholars and other notable individuals with a background in digital privacy and security. The team will provide strategic guidance to NordVPN and help shape the company's future by sharing unique perspectives, insights and trends.
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NordSec co-founder Tom Okman welcomed Troy Hunt to its team of advisers in a statement, saying:
“We are very excited to greet Troy Hunt as an advisor. Our product family is growing rapidly, and we have ambitious plans ahead. That’s why it’s important to have a team of professionals who can support us by providing their expert insights and strategic advice.”
HaveIBeenPwned
Troy Hunt was analyzing data breaches for trends and patterns back in 2013 when he first came up with the idea for HaveIBeenPwned. He realized data breaches could greatly impact users who might not even be aware that their data had been compromised online.
In addition to joining NordVPN's team of advisers, Hunt has also announced that he has decided to open source HaveIBeenPwned's code base in an effort to ensure that the service can continue to operate even without him. In a blog post announcing his intention to open source HaveIBeenPwned, Hunt provided more details on his decision, saying;
“Open sourcing the HIBP code base gives me the opportunity to address that original problem I set out to solve with the M&A process: finding other people that can help sustain the project. All that backlog, all those bugs, all the great new ideas people have but I simply can't implement myself can, if the community is willing, finally be contributed back into the project. And that's something that I'm adamant about; the goal here isn't just to say "hey, look at the code, it's not logging your searches", it's fundamentally about making HIBP a more sustainable, more robustly featured community service.”
HaveIBeenPwned is one of the easiest ways for users to see if any of their credentials have been leaked in a data breach and by going open source, the service will likely be able to expand further and help more people improve their cybersecurity posture.
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