Joshua Corman, the Chief Security Officer at PTC and co-founder of the grassroots advocacy group I Am The Cavalry will be a featured speaker at the 5th Security of Things Forum on June 19th in Boston.
Corman, formerly the Director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative, will present a talk entitled “Bits and Bytes, Flesh and Blood: The Real Cyber Consequences of Unsafe IoT.” In it, Corman discusses the need to re-evaluate cyber risk and cyber security for the Internet of Things.
[Grab your Security of Things Tickets here.]
Our society and others have learned through hard experience to balance the convenience and public health trade offs of other technological breakthroughs. It took decades, for example, for public health and safety advocates to force basic safety features like seatbelts on the automobile industry. Four decades later, seatbelts are accompanied by front and side airbags and the safety rating of a vehicle is a big part of its value on the sales lot.
In the information security space, however, the stakes for attacks and failures have – thus far- been low: the loss of data or availability, a hit to an organization’s productivity numbers. However, that is changing. Faults in IT systems increasingly have real world consequences, as the WannaCry attack demonstrated when it crippled hospitals throughout the UK.
With cyber risk involving not just “bits and bytes” but “flesh and blood,” as Corman notes, do we need an equivalent “five star safety rating” for Internet of Things devices like connected cars, implantable medical devices or even the lowly webcam? If so, what is the best way to stand up such an oversight function and where should its authority lie?
Beyond that: what cultural changes are needed within the software development- and information security industries to address the risks posed by billions of Internet connected things? Corman gives us his thoughts and a vision of a possible future.
Join us on June 19th in Boston to hear Josh’s illuminating talk!
