Events

Surviving on a Diet of Poisoned Fruit: Reducing the Risks of America’s Cyber Dependencies

Prospective Digital Learning Students
Annual Event,
Lecture / Panel
 
Open to the Public
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Cybersecurity Lecture Five
Sponsored by The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

In his Distinguished Lecture, Richard Danzig proposes strategies for coping with a security paradox presented by cyber systems: As digital systems grant us unprecedented powers, they also make us less secure. While their immense communication capabilities enable widescale collaboration and networking, they open doors to unprecedented intrusion. Concentrations of data and manipulative power vastly improve efficiency and scale, but these attributes increase the amount that can be stolen or subverted by successful attack. While we are now empowered to retrieve and manipulate data on our own, this beneficial “democratization” removes a chain of human approvals that served as safeguards.

In sum, cyber systems nourish us, but at the same time, they weaken and poison us. Wise strategies, aimed at safeguarding the nation's data storehouse of vital information, must embrace a mix of technical responses, economic and business judgments, and policy choices. Focusing on Federal government vulnerabilities--but noting implications for all users--Dr. Danzig argues that we are not doing nearly as well as we could and recommends several paths to improvement.

Panelists include:

  • Richard Danzig - Vice Chair, The RAND Corporation
  • Ralph Langner - Director and Founder, Langner Communications
  • Andy Ozment - Assistant Secretary, Office of Cybersecurity and Communications, US Department of Homeland Security
  • Stefan Savage - Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, Director, Center for Network Systems, University of California, San Diego

A networking reception will follow the panel discussion. We hope you will join us for an engaging discourse around this critical topic.

Register