Phillip Henry Griffin

He was predeceased by both parents and the grandmother who raised him, Anne Beasley.

He is survived by his wife of forty-six years, Harriette, two children, Alice Griffin and David Griffin both of Raleigh and his granddaughter Emma Hallam, also of Raleigh, and he leaves behind his cherished sister, Bonnie Denkins of Garner, NC. Also surviving are a step-mother, Anne Griffin of RI, sisters, Marian Passmore of FL and Pam Henrique of RI, and numerous nieces and nephews.

Phil was raised by his beloved Granny in what he fondly called “pre-Historic Oakwood”. He attended Raleigh Public Schools and graduated in 1969. During his 20s, he pursued a career as a musician, started a small siding business, held a variety of jobs, and enrolled in NCSU, where he completed a BS in Computer Science in 1984. Phil worked as programmer for several years developing expertise in ASN-1, a cryptographic messaging tool widely used in telecommunications, computer networking and cryptography. In 1994 Phil started his own consulting firm, Griffin Consulting Company. From 2007 to 2009 he worked as a Senior Managing Consultant with IBM. In 2011 Phil earned a MS IT in Information Assurance and Security at Capella University. From 2014 until the time of his death, Phil worked at Wells Fargo Bank where he was a VP and EISA Systems Architect. Wells Fargo awarded him the Tesla Award for Innovation in 2016 and he was inducted into the Wells Fargo Inventor Hall of Fame in 2018.

Phil was a CISM and ISSA Fellow with over 25 years of information assurance experience. He served as a trusted security adviser, security architect, and consultant with leading corporations, and acted as committee chair, editor, and head of delegation in the development of US national and international security standards. Phil served on the ISSA Educational Advisory Council and the ISSA Journal Editorial Advisory Board, and actively participated in ITU-T SG17 Security, ISO TC68/SC2 Security, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC27 Security techniques, and X9 Financial Services standards development. His current work encompassed encryption technologies, access control, and biometric information security management. Phil had 40 U.S. patents awarded at the time of his death covering the intersection of biometrics, blockchain, cryptography, RFID, and information security. He had twenty-five academic and professional technical publications and had spoken at leading security conferences around the world. In May of 2013 his paper, “Telebiometric Information Security and Safely Management” won second prize at the ITU Kaleidoscope 2013 Conference held at Kyoto University in Japan. In December 2019 his paper, “Thought-Based Authenticated Key Exchange”, won the best paper award at the ITU Kaleidoscope 2019 Conference in Atlanta, GA.

Phil was a highly motivated, intelligent and creative person who held strong opinions about human rights and the state of the country and world. He was an informed progressive, and a compassionate person who was proud of his children and granddaughter and loved that they were the kind caring people that they are. Phil had an affinity for children and animals that they returned; and he loved all of his nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews, some of whom fondly called him Uncle Grandpa Phil. He had an amazing sense of humor and an exuberant charismatic personality that is already greatly missed. Phil’s family, friends’ and colleagues’ lives have all been enriched by knowing Phil.

In lieu of flowers the family requests that those who wish to honor Phil’s life make a donation to either Amnesty International, or a Food Bank in your local community.

Arrangements by Brown-Wynne, 300 Saint Mary's Street, Raleigh.