He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1974[6] for his research on elementary abelian and dihedral defect groups, under George Isaac Glauberman and Richard Dagobert Brauer.

[2] The term "What You See Is What You Sign" (WYSIWYS) was coined in 1998 by Landrock and Torben P. Pedersen of Cryptomathic during their work on delivering secure and legally binding digital signatures for Pan-European projects.

[11] Landrock contributed to more than twenty entries to the Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security including articles on PKCS, SSH, public key infrastructure and certificate authorities.

[12] His research focus since the late 1980s included subject areas as Key management systems,[13] EMV and Card Payment Solutions[14] and Authentication.

[16] His achievements with Cryptomathic were recognised by the World Economic Forum in 2003 and he received the VISA Smart Start Award for the work on Chip and Pin.