Cybersecurity Leaders Dispel Top 10 Myths about Their Field and Share Tales from the Front Lines

BROOKLYN, New York – The latest in a series of open lectures on cybersecurity at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering will reveal what it is like to engage in the cyber equivalent of hand-to-hand combat with some of the world’s most sophisticated black-hat hackers and examine the top 10 popular misconceptions that people have about cybersecurity.

The lecture will be given by Dmitri Alperovitch, known for his expertise in cybersecurity policy and state tradecraft. Alperovitch is the co-founder and chief technology officer of the endpoint security technology firm CrowdStrike and a former special advisor to the U.S. Department of Defense. He will discuss the problems with misguided but widely accepted beliefs in his field. For example, is attribution — accurately matching the offender to the offense — really impossible in cyberspace, as many think? Is the proliferation of cyber tools like malicious exploits truly inevitable?

A panel discussion will follow, featuring Geoff Brown, the chief information security officer of New York City and head of NYC Cyber Command, the organization charged with directing the city’s response to cyber incidents. Brown also served in the federal government, including work with the National Commission for Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, more commonly known as the 9/11 Commission. Also appearing on the panel will be Omkhar Arasaratnam, formerly the global director of cybersecurity and Americas regional head of technology security services for Credit Suisse, who holds numerous patents and has led contributions to several international standards, and Garin Pace, a cyber product leader at AIG, responsible for cyber exposure in the Financial Lines and Property products globally. Randal Milch, co-chair of the NYU Center for Cybersecurity and a distinguished fellow at the NYU Law Center on Law and Security, will moderate.

“Cyber Lecture Series 2018: Dispelling the Top 10 Myths of Cybersecurity” will take place at NYU Tandon in Downtown Brooklyn on Thursday, March 29, 2018, from 3 to 5:30 p.m.

Sponsored by AIG, the event is the 10th in a series on cybersecurity and privacy at NYU Tandon. The series has consistently drawn high-level representatives of New York’s regional businesses, government agencies, nonprofits, academic institutions, media, and concerned members of the public.

“New York University is proud to be at the forefront of making cyberspace a safer place, and the work of our students, faculty, and researchers is playing a vital role in keeping our personal data private and our critical infrastructure and systems more impervious to malicious hackers,” said Katepalli R. Sreenivasan, who holds dual roles as the dean of NYU Tandon and all engineering at the University. “We are pleased to host Dmitri Alperovitch and our esteemed panelists at this important event and are grateful to AIG for making it possible.”

Admission to the event is free but space is limited and registration is required. For more information and to register to attend or to view the live stream, visit the event page at cyberlecture.engineering.nyu.edu. Viewers may submit questions for the panelists during the lecture at cyberlectureseries@nyu.edu or on Twitter @cyberlecture. Follow discussions at #NYUCyberLecture.

The NYU School of Engineering is an internationally recognized center for cybersecurity research, education, and policy. It has received all three Center of Excellence designations from the National Security Agency and the United States Cyber Command and is recognized for its leadership in hardware security, based in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, as well as software and privacy research, centered in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.  NYU Tandon joined with other NYU schools to form the Center for Cybersecurity. It supports research into new approaches to security and privacy by combining security technology, psychology, law, public policy, and business. NYU Tandon’s online master’s program in cybersecurity was named the outstanding online program in the nation by the Online Learning Consortium (formerly Sloan-C), and its new Cyber Fellowship provides a flexible, affordable, academically rigorous way to earn a master’s degree.

About the New York University Tandon School of Engineering
The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, the founding date for both the New York University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture and the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (widely known as Brooklyn Poly). A January 2014 merger created a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences, rooted in a tradition of invention and entrepreneurship and dedicated to furthering technology in service to society. In addition to its main location in Brooklyn, NYU Tandon collaborates with other schools within NYU, the country’s largest private research university, and is closely connected to engineering programs at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. It operates Future Labs focused on start-up businesses in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn and an award-winning online graduate program. For more information, visit engineering.nyu.edu.