Csaba Csabai

Csaba Csabai, a crypto and blockchain evangelist, an independent cryptocurrency blogger, and a well-respected member of the crypto-community. He spent the last decade working with KBC, the second largest bank group in the world, implementing and developing core banking solutions, and building lending systems, including a brand new fully digitalized onboarding and lending platform. His exceptional knowledge in the traditional banking world combined with his understanding of the blockchain enabled him to deliver real solutions to valid use-cases of collateral-based lending in the crypto world.

Early life

While still at college Csabai started actively working on a corporate ERP project, where he fell in love with the Linux OS along with it’s whole open source view. His attention quickly shifted to IT security, and this became the area to continuously train himself in. He managed to cause a little trouble by being a bit too interested in security protocols at college. At around this time, He first became a member than the leader of the biggest Hungarian hacker community. Back than, the term “hacker” meant something completely different. The hackers in this community actually broke into IT systems. Some for fun, and some were commissioned by customers. The community wasn’t focused on illegal activities, more so sharing knowledge and experience among members. What individuals did with this knowledge was their responsibility.

First company

By early 2000, he became a well known member of the Hungarian cyber security scene, which was part of one of the strongest Hungarian ethical hacking groups. In 2001 he and his business partner founded the company, SaveAs with no external funding. First in Hungary, then in the CEE region SaveAs became one of the most prosperous IT security enterprises.

After 5 years of day-to-day involvement in the company, he decided to focus on “prevention” instead of “detection”, so he and his team developed a DLP (Digital Leakage Protection) solution, called EagleEyeOS (EEOS). The service offered in 2004 provided a brand new solution for corporate data theft/data leak protection. The solution won numerous international awards, and in it’s heyday it's user base was over 100,000. The solution was patented in 2008 under the name: US-2008133714-A1: Eagleeyeos zone: method of control of separation technology of file sharing for network computers. What made the product unique was that it solved document protection without tagging, or without having to store it in a special format. This ease of use appealed to many, contributing to further adoption. The project received a wide range of investment offers and buyout proposals, one of which came from one of the biggest antivirus development company: Symantec who wanted to broaden their product offering with EEOS. Csabai exited the company and the product in 2007 during an acquisition. EEOS is still active on the market, it’s still being developed.

Cryptography

Besides developing DLP and IT security platforms, Csabai discovered cryptography in the late nineties. He was involved in the development of one of the first Hungarian hardware web store operational layout, where his team had to solve the problem of providing SSL reach, which was quite unique back then. Following that project Csabai was involved in numerous projects, mainly as a PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) expert. He then participated in the development and regulatory acceptance of the Hungarian Electronic Signature law (2001/XXXV. Law), which he considers as one of his personal achievements. The technologies developed during this process have stood the test of time, as they were only updated in the 2016 law amendment.

Csabai was part of the development and implementation of the first chipcard-based e-bank service at K&H Bank as a PKI specialist. He received his postgraduate degree in the field of Public Key Infrastructure specialist from Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Csabai has many publications on the subject of PKI and IT security.

Banking

He then joined Kereskedelmi és Hitelbank Zrt (the second largest Hungarian bank, a subsidiary of the Belgian KBC bank) in 2007 as an Information Technology Risk-Analyst where he gained 10 years of experience working in a traditional banking environment. During these past 10 years, Csabai have accumulated a great variety of both personal and professional successes. Amongst others, he was responsible for operating Transactional and Integrated Systems with 30 direct employees, along with high priority transactions and core banking systems. Later while running the Service Improvement department, he had the opportunity to further develop his professional relationship with the leaders of the Bank’s network and other projects.

Economics

Following the crash of 2008 he started opening up more and more towards economics, as he found it important to get a deep understanding on how the global economy works. In order to study the basics, he began a University BSC in economics, which he finished with straight A’s after presenting his thesis on „analysis and visualization of mutual funds for the sake of simplified decision making”.

During his studies he decided to focus on his blogger hobby (running for 6 years then) in the direction of economics, and started to write daily blogs on the subject on the variance.hu blog.

He started to dwell deeper in the field of alternative (not based on a chrematistic model) financial products, more specifically Bitcoin. Soon after understanding Bitcoin a little more, Csabai realized that although he missed the genesis stage, this is what he have to be involved in. in 2015 he was part of the team developing one of the biggest Hungarian taxation model (commercial cash register project) as an IT security, and PKI expert responsible for designing and implementing the project, then obtaining Common Criteria EAL-4 certificate.

References

https://startitkh.hu/esemeny/fenyesebb-a-lancnal-blockchain-a-startupok-es-a-felsooktatas-vilagaban/

http://aries.ektf.hu/techday/index.php?p=1&s=7

https://computerworld.hu/ceginfo/az-eagleeyeos-2006-legigeretesebb-termeke-233941.html

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