I3P hosts infrastructure protection experts
Cyber security experts from around the world convened at Dartmouth March 19
through 21 for an inaugural meeting of the International Federation for Information
Processing (IFIP) Working Group for Critical Infrastructure Protection.
Co-hosted by IFIP and Dartmouth's Institute
for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P), the working group seeks:
to bring a global perspective to a topic that lacks geographic boundaries, to
exchange research findings, and to create an international community of experts
committed to a crucial security issue.
Richard ("Dickie") George '70 spoke in March about the critical need
for nations to develop and maintain secure cyber infrastructures. (Photo by
Joseph Mehling '69)
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The need to safeguard the world's critical infrastructures—the electronic
communications networks and physical systems on which most nations now
depend—cannot be understated. Not only were these infrastructures designed long
before cyber security was an issue, but the digital world is interconnected in
ways that were previously unimaginable. As digital networks have grown, so too
has the number of hackers and terrorists intent on attacking the
infrastructure.
Alumni, faculty, researchers, and students attended the three-day event.
"We were honored to host a Working Group on cyber infrastructure
protection," says Martin
Wybourne, vice provost for research. "These issues have no borders and
need an international perspective."
In his keynote address, an impassioned Richard ("Dickie") George
'70, technical director of the Information Assurance Directorate of the National Security Agency, said: "Securing
the infrastructure is not an exercise, but rather an imperative. There will
never be another war against the United States that doesn't include attacks on
infrastructure. The bad guys are all interconnected; it is now critical that
the good guys be connected, too."
David Kotz, professor of
computer science, pointed to Americans' growing reliance on smart devices in
their homes and cars. "The average person must not only adjust to a
digitally mediated lifestyle, he or she must constantly make decisions to
ensure the privacy of information," he said.
Sy Goodman, of Georgia Tech and the I3P, brought an international relations
perspective to the meeting, stating, "What cyber space has done—in
addition to creating an abstract entity that is totally international—is
effectively place all countries physically adjacent to one another. One's
enemies are no longer neighbors, they can come from anywhere. At the same time,
we are increasingly interconnected electronically and so at greater risk of
attack."
With more than 60 researchers representing a dozen countries, many attendees
felt the working group was an important first step in thinking globally about
vulnerabilities, cyber threats, and infrastructure protection.
Eric Goetz, event co-chair and assistant director of the I3P, said,
"The goal of this meeting was to share knowledge and build a community of
experts focused on a serious global problem. With a follow-up meeting scheduled
in Washington, D.C., and plans for another in Europe, we're clearly off to a
good start."
By LAURIE BURNHAM
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