John Griffin received his BS and MS degrees in mathematics from California State University, San Diego, in 1966 and 1968. He earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Washington State University, in 1973.

He was a member of the Computer Science Department at North Dakota State University before joining the Mathematics Department at Boise State University in the fall of 1983. When the Mathematics and Computer Science Department was separated and Computer Science moved to the College of Engineering in 2001, he joined the new department as founding chair where he is currently Chair and Associate Professor of Computer Science.

Dr. Griffin's research interests are in the areas of computer security and cryptography.

Dr. Griffin is a member of the Association of Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society.