Today, September 19:
The Future of Infosec in Historical Context
Whitfield Diffie
VP of Information Security, ICANN
Chief Cryptographer, Revere Security
7:40 p.m.
Student Union Ballroom
Information security before 1900 consisted of locking the safes,
guarding the buildings, and sending documents via trusted courier.
The first transatlantic radio transmission in 1904 and World War I a
decade later heralded the arrival of a tool too valuable to forgo, a
tool that bypassed all known information-security security techniques,
with the notable exception of cryptography. Thus began a century long
effort to achieve satisfactory cryptographic systems, an effort that
reached a major watershed in 2005.
In many ways, the arrival of radio a century ago parallels the more
recent arrival of the Internet. The Internet is a tool that no one
can afford to forgo but it is a tool fraught with security challenges.
We will examine the parallels between internet infosec and earlier
forms and look forward at upcoming phenomena, particularly cloud
computing.