Melih Abdulhayoglu, CEO and founder of Comodo , is an inventor, innovator, and internet security advocate and expert.
Since founding cybersecurity firm Comodo in 1998, Melih has grown the Comodo companies into a worldwide presence, all while remaining committed to making the internet a safer place for everyone by providing free security products for consumers and enterprises alike, in accordance with his motto, “Security is a right. Not a privilege.”
If you ask Melih where his drive and vision to create a safer internet came from, he’ll point to his childhood. “I was always building things. Always,” he says, recalling the time he built his first electronic circuit at age nine. “When I got to university, I continued building and working on innovative projects. It was just natural for me” After graduating, in the early 1990s Melih saw an opportunity with the rapid development of the internet. “I saw how much potential it had to spread knowledge, to share information,” he said. “But I also saw how dangerous it could be.” Recognizing an opportunity to use his talents to create a safer internet, Melih founded Comodo in 1998.
But for Melih, founding Comodo was just the first step. Recognizing that he couldn’t build a safer internet alone, in 2005, Melih founded the Certification Authority Browser Forum (CA/B Forum), a voluntary consortium of certificate authorities, internet browser developers, and operating system vendors, which “advances industry best practices to improve the ways that certificates are used to the benefit of Internet users and the security of their communications.” Today, the forum includes over forty certificate authority members and six major browser vendors.
In 2008, Melih Abdulhayoglu’s efforts to promote Internet security earned him the Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year® award in Information Technology Software for New Jersey. In 2011.