Inducted
April 17, 2009
Degrees
- BSEE 1975 WVU (Magna Cum Laude)
- MSEE 1976 WVU
Dennis Toothman, a magna cum laude BSEE graduate of WVU in 1975, founded CipherOptics in 2000. CipherOptics is an industry leader in large scale, high performance encryption solutions. His career has spanned hardware, software, and large scale networking experience with multi-billion dollar corporations and start-up organizations, developing and pioneering innovative high-technology products. Toothman began to focus on the security industry in 1998 as Vice President of Engineering for Celotek While at Celotek, he produced a family of ATM encryptors supporting T1, T3, OC-3, and OC-12 interfaces (1.5 -
622 Megabits). His products were adopted by one of the largest Swiss banks and are still in use today, representing the world’s largest encrypted ATM deployment.
Recognizing that the market for ATM products was limited, Toothman left Celotek and began discussions with Lucent Technologies regarding the development of a Gigabit IP encryptor for the storage marketplace. Working from his basement, Toothman negotiated a $3.5 million contract with Lucent. This contract was used to launch CipherOptics in August 2000.
Toothman was featured on the cover of Communication News magazine in March 2000. Many of the ideas Toothman discussed with Communication News came to fruition when he founded CipherOptics. His products are in use throughout the world by many government, financial, and manufacturing institutions. In March, 2009 Gartner selected CipherOptics as a "Cool Vendor in Infrastructure Protection."
As a graduate student at WVU, Toothan was awarded a stipend by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in recognition of his software engineering contributions to the mine monitoring project under the direction of Dr. M.
Dayne Aldridge. Toothman is a member of the Pi Mu Epsilon math honorary, and Eta Kappa Nu and Tau Beta Pi engineering honoraries. He is also a 33 year member of IEEE.
Founder of Cyberian Data Protection LLC. Served as President and CTO from 2013 until 2018. Focused on cyber security products with emphasis on marketing in Brazil. Did extensive travel in Brazil as part of the sales/marketing campaign.