Founded in 2010, Five Directions was founded by William Arbaugh shortly before he retried from the University of Maryland at College Park (UMCP) as an Associate Professor. Having worked in the arena of information security, (aka Cybersecurity,) since the 1980's when he responded to the Morris worm while working as an Army Captain at the Pentagon, Professor Arbaugh left the Army and joined the National Security Agency first in the National Computer Security Center and later as a Senior Technical advisor in an element that would later become part of the Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group. While at NSA, Professor Arbaugh was awarded with the agency level Dr. Louis Tordella award for exceptional teamwork, collaboration, and success in the mission of World Class Cryptography. Professor Arbaugh left NSA as a GG-15 in early 2000 and joined the faculty at UMCP as an Assistant Professor. In 2004, Professor Arbaugh co-invented memory forensics along with students and subsequently started a company, Komoku, to commercialize the technology. Komoku was acquired by Microsoft in 2008 and has incorporated Komoku's memory scanning technology into a variety of products including Windows. Many of the employees of Five Directions have similar experience to Professor Arbaugh. One employee, for instance, is credited with building the first widely used network security monitor in the 1990's. Others have years of development and operational experience.
