in mathematics from Princeton University in 1976 after completing a senior thesis titled "Simple algebras", under the supervision of John Coleman Moore.

[2][8] In 2010–2011, she was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, where she investigated issues involving security of government systems, and their privacy and policy implications.

[20] She is the co-author of “Keys Under Doormats: Mandating Insecurity by Requiring Government Access to All Data and Communications,” which received the 2015 J. D. Falk Award from the Messaging Malware Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group.

The Obama administration gave substantial credit to this report's analysis when it announced that it would not pursue exceptional access to phone data.

[21] Landau testified that making iPhones less secure would simply send terrorists and bad actors running toward options that the FBI and Congress had no control over.