Recently, Intel Security hosted its annual flagship security conference “Focus” in Las Vegas. The tone of the conference was set by Sr. Vice President of Intel Security and keynote speaker Chris Young. With Intel Security set to spin off its security unit, attention was sharply focused on the soon to be CEO of the second coming of McAfee. It was a packed house with many in the crowd surely anticipating Young’s keynote address and interview of special guest: actor and tech savvy investor Ashton Kutcher.
Over the course of Young’s nearly two-hour keynote address, time was not measured in minutes but seconds. The second coming of McAfee and the unveiling of the new McAfee logo may have taken center stage, but it was Young’s focus on his contributions to a recently published book entitled “The Second Economy: The Race for Trust, Treasure and Time in the Cybersecurity War” that set the theme for the 4-day conference.
“The second economy is more trust-related and as we move from a physical to a virtual economy, the trust factor and our ability to deliver a real cyber security capability will be more important because we are moving into a world where computing is a pervasive element of how we live our lives,” Young said.
One of the biggest challenges in the second economy was elaborated on by Ashton Kutcher during his interview with Young in the later part of the keynote address. According to Kutcher, the second economy “is a new country, a new world and we don’t know what the rules are yet. We are never going to be able to lock all the [virtual] doors, so we need to know the extent to which we can trust our neighbors.”
Emerging threats in the second economy are more sophisticated and constantly evolving. Just a few years back, an organization’s focus was thwarting Advanced Persistent Threats which typically target a company’s data store of Payment and Personally Identifiable Information (PII). The threat landscape has evolved and the actors are no longer just individuals and groups, but nation-states intent on covertly shaping sociopolitical landscapes and governance of other nations by participating in nefarious cyber activity.
Kutcher went on to point out the need for a “global doctrine for cybersecurity, something that sets out a basic handshake agreement and the sanctions for breaching the agreed rules. We need to write this doctrine so it represents the rules we want. If not, it will be written by idiots.” He went on to suggest “You don’t want it to be written by people who don’t even understand how the internet works,” to the amusement of much of the audience.
For more information:
Second Economy book