We rely on a vast array of cyber networks to communicate and travel, power our homes, run our economy, and provide government services. Yet cyber-attacks have increased dramatically over the last decade, exposing sensitive personal and business information, disrupting critical operations, and imposing high costs on the economy. How can we protect ourselves against cyber threats in the future? What methods are being implemented in the U.S. and Germany, and what challenges are we facing? On Thursday, May 21, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., panelists at the German Center for Research and Innovation (GCRI) in New York discuss these and other significant questions affecting cyber security and ethics.
Dr. Sandro Gaycken, a technology and security researcher at the European School for Management and Technology in Berlin exploring the nexus of digital technology, economies, and politics, will present his research on cyber warfare, cyber defense, cyber intelligence, and high security IT. Dr. Gaycken is a fellow at Oxford University’s Martin College as well as a director for strategic cyber defense projects in the NATO SPS Program, a member of the benchmarking group for “Industrie 4.0” standards for the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), an associate fellow of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), and a senior fellow at EastWest Institute. Dr. Gaycken will discuss how he is a strong advocate of disruptive innovation and regulation in IT security.
Dr. Gaycken will be joined by Prof. Russell Miller, Professor of Law at the Washington and Lee University School of Law in Virginia, whose teaching and research focuses on comparative law with an emphasis on German law and legal culture. Prof. Miller has been very active in the transatlantic dialogue concerning privacy and security in the years since Edward Snowden's leaks. He has provided commentary in Der Spiegel and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and has lectured extensively on these issues in Germany, where he testified before the Bundestag's NSA investigation committee and organized several symposia on these topics.
Prof. Dr. Günter Müller, Director of the Institute of Computer Science and Social Studies (IIG) and Professor at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, will elaborate on how the Web is critical to our continued prosperity, creativity, and liberty. Like democracy, it needs defending. Advanced analytical data mining and intelligence techniques are currently chipping away at another freedom: privacy. Prof. Dr. Müller will provide three suggestions on how to cope with this and show empirical data to support his claims. In particular, he will address how common standards should allow for equal treatment of data, namely, that users should be able to leave a social network and take the data with them. Furthermore, he will discuss how better transparency on what data has been collected about us should exist. Lastly, he will comment on how privacy and security cannot be fully ensured as they can be broken by the mere computing power that exists today.
Prof. Dr. Müller received his Ph.D. in databases and worked as a postdoc with IBM on the famous System R project. He has held visiting professor positions at both Harvard and Berkeley universities and has worked as a consultant with industry leaders at IBM, SAP, NTT Communication, and Hitachi. In 2010, Prof. Dr. Müller received the “Ehrenkreuz” from the Austrian president for his influence on today’s communication infrastructure. Prof.
Dr. Stephanie Schmiedermair, Chair of European Law, International Law, and Public Law at Universität Leipzig and Coordinator of the university’s master’s program on European Integration, will discuss the legal dimensions of cyber security. She will address the main problems in fighting cybercrime, what kind of legislation is already available to fight it, and what type of legislation would be useful in the future. Prior to joining the law faculty in Leipzig in 2014, Prof. Schiedermair worked as a senior research fellow and lecturer for international law and media law at the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and was a research fellow at the Monash University of Melbourne, Australia (2011) and the Yale Law School (2010). Her current research interests focus on the protection of privacy under international law and European law, freedom of expression and freedom of the media in international law and European law, and human rights aspects of new media.
Percy K. and Vidal L. W. Hudson Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, Prof. Steven M. Bellovin, will moderate the discussion. Prof. Bellovin does research on networks, security, and especially why the two don't get along, as well as related public policy issues. Prof. Bellovin joined the faculty in 2005 after many years at Bell Labs and AT&T Labs Research, where he was an AT&T Fellow. He received a B.A. degree from Columbia University and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While a graduate student, he helped create Netnews; for this, he and the other perpetrators were given the 1995 Usenix Lifetime Achievement Award. Prof. Bellovin has served as Chief Technologist of the Federal Trade Commission. He also received the 2007 NIST/NSA National Computer Systems Security Award and has been elected to the Cyber Security Hall of Fame.
This discussion will take place on Thursday, May 21, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the German Center for Research and Innovation (871 United Nations Plaza, First Avenue, btw. 48th & 49th Streets). Unable to attend? Follow @gcri_ny and the hashtag #CyberSecurity for live tweets. This event is co-sponsored by the German Center for Research and Innovation (GCRI) and the German U15 universities.
