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.
Joshua Corman is the Chief Information Security Officer at PTC.
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!
The Security of Things™ Forum is pleased to announce that technology activist, journalist and New York Times best-selling author Cory Doctorow will keynote the 2018 Security of Things Forum in Boston on June 19th.
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing (boingboing.net) and the author of fiction and non-fiction novels.
Doctorow is one of the brightest thinkers on issues related to technology, security, privacy and civil liberties: issues he has tackled in his writing, from his New York Times Bestseller LITTLE BROTHER, to 2014’s INFORMATION DOESN’T WANT TO BE FREE, a book about creativity in the Internet age. His latest young adult novel is HOMELAND, the bestselling sequel to 2008’s LITTLE BROTHER.
“I’m excited to be able to address an audience of practitioners, experts and entrepreneurs: as we subsume computers into our lives in ever-more-intimate ways, on our bodies, around our bodies, even *in* our bodies, understanding the ways that our designs can thoughtlessly enable crimes, harassment and even dictatorship is key to averting a future none of us want to see,” Doctorow said.
“The events of recent months have underscored the degree to which technology cannot be held apart from issues like morality and ethics, as well as societal values such as privacy, intellectual freedom and freedom of expression. Cory is one of the smartest and most influential voices of reason on these issues,” said Paul Roberts, the Founder of The Security of Things Forum. “We’re thrilled to have him as the keynote speaker for our 2018 event!”
When he is not writing, Doctorow is a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), the non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He holds an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University (UK), where he is a Visiting Professor; he is also a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate. In 2007, Cory served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.
Cory’s novels have been translated into dozens of languages. He is the recipient of the Locus, Prometheus, Copper Cylinder, White Pine and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards. Cory co-founded the open source peer-to-peer software company OpenCola, and serves on the boards and advisory boards of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the Clarion Foundation, the Open Technology Fund and the Metabrainz Foundation.
About The Security of Things Forum
The Security of Things™ Forum (SECoT) delivers some of the world’s leading experts and executives for a day of discussion, learning and debate on the preeminent challenge of our time: securing the Internet of Things. Now in its fourth year and fifth installment, Security of Things Forum has brought some of the world’s top experts on the security of embedded systems, connected devices, critical infrastructure and cloud together under one roof. Past keynote speakers include noted car hacker Chris Valasek, medical device security expert Kevin Fu of the University of Michigan, In-Q-Tel Chief Technology Officer Dan Geer and Signal/Whisper Systems creator and “hillbilly hacker” Moxie Marlinspike.
Security of Things and LiveWorx: Better Together
This year’s Forum is happening alongside LiveWorx 2018, a global technology conference and marketplace for solutions engineered for a smart, connected world. With your Security of Things registration, you’ll receive a complimentaryLiveWorx Explorer Pass that gives you access to LiveWorx Keynotes, LiveTalx Presentations and Xtropolis, the 150,000 sq. ft. exhibition hall.
Or you can upgrade your registration to include a LiveWorx All Access pass to attend over 230 breakout sessions featuring thought leaders from a wide range of industries and technology disciplines. For more information on LiveWorx, please visit www.LiveWorx.com.
