Talk: On Cyber-Peace – Towards an International Cyber Defense Strategy
While UK is preparing for war we’ll try something completely different at DeepSec 2011. We will talk about peace („cyber-peace“ to be exact). The ill-defined term cyber-war is haunting media, security communities, politics and the military for a while now. We already had talks about this at past DeepSec conferences. Cybersecurity is currently a big hype even in mainstream media like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, The Guardian or The New Yorker. Exploits and Vulnerabilities like Stuxnet or the German Trojan Rootkit for Lawful Interception are discussed in prime time news. Hackers like the Chaos Computer Club offer technical advice to the German Parliament and the highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court. Due to the constant work of security experts, researchers and hackers (including some really cool media fnords and stints), the level of security awareness has been raised to a level, which has never been achieved before.
However, the media (and also some „real security experts“) tend to alarmism and panicking, including the rants of a Cyberwar, which is supposed to break out every day (or about now depending on your sources). This does not help to solve the diverse existing security problems. Assessing the facts and dealing with the risks rationally can’t be done when in panic. So Stefan Schumacher, managing director of the Magdeburger Institut für Sicherheitsforschung, will give a short introduction into the most important security problems tied to cyber warfare. He will present some ideas to solve those problems touching technology, psychology and governance, presenting a strategic level of security.
- Raising security awareness in users, system administrators and programmers/developers
- Enhancing training and education for IT Security capacity building
- Enhance IT Security management by software developers, no matter if it is an Open Source Project or a huge company
- Enhance international cooperation on IT Security
- Setting and enhancing an international legal framework for IT Security
You see, achieving and maintaining cyber-peace can be as demanding as starting a Cyberwar. Don’t expect to see simple solutions for countering threats hiding in complex infrastructure and interwoven networks and gadgets. If you plan to start a Cyberwar, want to defend against it, or try to completely avoid this kind of warfare (regardless of profession or role), then this talk is for you. All others who might caught in the middle of a cyber shoot-out should attend as well.