Announcing the MANRS Ambassadors

We’ve appointed four MANRS ambassadors in the areas of training, research, and policy. We’re excited to welcome Anirban Datta, Flavio Luciani, Boris Mimeur, and Sanjeev Gupta to the program, and can’t wait to benefit from their input and expertise.

Ambassadors are representatives from current MANRS participant organizations who provide mentorship, guidance, and feedback to others in the routing security community. With their wealth of experience and knowledge – and their passion and commitment – they help make the global routing infrastructure more robust and secure.

The MANRS Ambassadors Selection Committee, consisting of six representatives from the MANRS Advisory Group, assessed the applications and appointed four exceptional individuals.

They’ll receive a monthly stipend of US$1,500 for up to six months and together they’ll train people on good routing practices, analyze routing incidents, research ways to secure routing, and survey the global policy landscape. Ambassadors will also provide mentorship to the MANRS Fellows in their respective categories to help the Fellows to fulfill their obligations.

Four Amazing Ambassadors

Anirban Datta, training ambassador

Anirban works for Fiber@Home Global Ltd in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His role is to establish international links and points of presence in different parts of the world. He’s also involved with many Internet network operators’ groups (NOGs) and community-driven organizations like bdNOG, SANOG, and INNOG. As an instructor, he helps to improve the technical knowledge of the local community.

Flavio Luciani, training ambassador

Flavio Luciani has a master’s degree in computer engineering from Roma 3 University. He’s worked with Namex since 2008. He supervised the technical and infrastructural development of the Internet exchange point, firstly as a member of the technical staff and then, from March 2020, as Chief Technology Officer.

Boris Mimeur, research ambassador

Boris is the Vice-President of Engineering Operations at CENGN in Canada. He leads teams developing a secure hybrid cloud platform that enables test and validation for new products and technologies. In the last two years, Boris has supported the promotion of security in BGP routing through partnerships with multiple Canadian Telecom Service Providers. He’s also contributed to the development of the IXP/CXP for the Ottawa Gatineau region (OGIX).

Sanjeev Gupta, policy ambassador

Sanjeev is based in Singapore. He first heard about routing in the late 80s. He believed that every single router contacted every other router every 30 seconds and the idea of security never entered his mind. Since then, he’s learnt the hard way what happens when people announce routes to Google. Trying to figure out why traffic for your network is going to a small Vietnam Internet service provider via a European Tier 1, when you have no relationship with either, is frustrating at best.

The Internet Society supports this program as part of its work to reduce common routing threats and establish norms for network operations. Find out more and join MANRS today.