Web Secret 519: Cybersecurity - part 1

This past March, I was the recipient of a $3,000 scholarship to attend the 2018 Yale Cyber Leadership Forum.

Yes, my alma mater charges $3,000 to attend a day and a half conference.

“The Yale Cyber Leadership Forum aims to bridge the divide among legal scholars and practitioners, technology experts, business leaders, and policymakers from across the globe on how best to understand and counter the most pressing cyber security challenges of our day.” This article aims to summarize what was discussed as it applies to mental health practitioners and organizations.

“The Forum brings together a diverse set of thought leaders who are eager to share their experiences, learn more about the array of cyber threats, gather new strategies for overcoming cybersecurity challenges, and contribute to discussions of the best way to tackle the challenges ahead.”

Note: Forum attendees were asked to follow the Chatham House Rule. We like to be as pretentious as possible in the Ivy League. For the rest of the world, at a meeting held under the Chatham House Rule, anyone who attends is free to use information from the discussion, but is not allowed to reveal who made any comment. It is designed to increase openness of discussion.

In a nutshell, this is what I learned:

• The field of cyber security is in its infancy
• Law and policy are lagging far behind technology
• It’s not just a tech issue, it’s a people issue. More on that later.

To elaborate, our intelligence leaders believe the risk of a cyber-attack eclipses terrorism as the greatest threat to the USA. If even one of our major infrastructure components (power grid, Internet, financial system) is compromised by a cyber-attack, the other two collapses and we are headed towards catastrophe. Complicating this narrative is the fact that through the world wide web, everyone around the globe is inter-connected.

As one expert put it: “We are as secure as the rest of the Internet.” Great.

These are the countries which have the greatest expertise in cyber warfare:

1. Russia
2. China
3. North Korea
4. Iran.

Quelle surprise!

We are vulnerable to cyber-attacks for a variety of reasons, which I will explain in next week's post.

None of it is good news.