Computer Science is Her Business
Sharon Goldberg’s cybersecurity software is helping companies protect their digital infrastructure
Computer scientist Sharon Goldberg researches cryptography and cybersecurity, focusing on keeping the internet’s infrastructure secure from bad actors. Over the course of several years, she and Ethan Heilman (GRS’22,’22), a former graduate student, published several papers on blockchain security that gained attention in the cryptocurrency world. In 2018, the two decided to bring their joint cybersecurity research to the consumer and launched Commonwealth Crypto, a start-up providing digital asset security for cryptocurrency platforms. In 2020, Goldberg and Heilman rebranded the company as BastionZero, pivoting out of the cryptocurrency industry and applying similar security technology to the broader problem of securing access to computer servers and other infrastructure.
“The cryptocurrency industry was very small at the time—and actually is still pretty small today—and we had been bumping up against that,” says Goldberg, an associate professor of computer science. “We ultimately wanted the opportunity to build something that any engineer could use.” BastionZero’s product is a zero trust software, designed to protect access to a company’s infrastructure. “If an adversary gets that administrative access to your infrastructure, they can control the infrastructure, change your code, and cause very bad things to happen to your product or your company,” Goldberg explains. Unlike many data security models, which take a “trust-but-verify” approach to granting access, zero trust networks put all users through the same stringent verification process.
With $6 million in funding from Dell Technologies Capital, the pair spent four years designing the platform, getting word out, and building a team of more than 10 people.
In 2024, BastionZero was purchased by Cloudflare, a network and security provider, and its technology was integrated into the site’s own zero trust platform. Now, rebranded as Cloudflare’s Access for Infrastructure product, the technology allows server administrators to customize their user authentication process as well as easily audit and control network access.
BastionZero is just one recent example of Arts & Sciences computer scientists spinning their research into business start-ups. In fact, BU was ranked 21st among global universities in digital entrepreneurship by Emerging, a French company that develops tools to improve the employability of graduates.
The BastionZero team continues to work on their platform within Cloudflare. “I’m doing a lot of innovation projects at Cloudflare within their zero trust platform,” Goldberg says. “I’m dealing with things that are very relevant to my research, including cryptography; I started my career in cryptography, so it’s really been fun.”