Cyber Scene #1

	Cyber Scene #1

This addition to the Newsletter is intended to provide an informative, timely backdrop of events, thinking, and developments that feed into technological advancement of SoS Cybersecurity collaboration and extend its outreach.

The Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University (GWU) hosted its Annual Strategic Conference on 3 May 2016 focused on “Public-Private Sector Coordination on Cybersecurity.” Across multiple sessions, a swath of public sector leaders as well as US intelligence community “titans”—former heads of CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, the National Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence Centers, and present DHS officials—combined engaging presentations with vibrant Q & A exchanges open to the public and captured live by CSPAN. This session also included foreign audience participants and French embassy officials, following up the French Minister of Interior Cazeneuve’s 11 March GWU presentation on the heels of this year’s Paris attacks. Among other pressing issues, one panel predicted an upturn in the public’s interest in cybersecurity due to lawsuits against private sector companies deficient in providing sufficient cybersecurity—and attendant US congressional and judicial response to define and regulate such legal action. See (video or text): http://www.c-span.org/video/?409023-2/george-washington-university-national-security-cybersecurity-conference

As SoS outreach continues its transoceanic direction, the view on US private-public sector from the UK’s thoughtful Economist is enlightening. In 16 April 2016’s article entitled “Encryption and the law: Scrambled regs,” The Economist casts the present situation as a cold war heating up and putting “America’s technology firms on a collision course with its policemen and spies.” It too looks at US Congressional activity as well as the implication for US domestic rules that leave “the truly dangerous” using more robust software written overseas. See:  http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21696937-cold-war-between-government-and-computing-firms-hotting-up-scrambled-regs.

(ID#: 16-9554)