News in the Category "Articles"
Page 13 of 21
Bruce Schneier: "It Is Not Prevention or Detection, It Is Response"
Coverage of this interview also appeared in International Business Times.
As well as being a renowned cryptographer, influential security expert and outspoken conference favourite, Bruce Schneier has had his share of coverage in recent months as the Prism story unfolded. He chose to leave his position as BT’s security futurologist at the end of last month and has now turned his hand to incident response.
Schneier recently left BT, who acquired his company Counterpane in 2006, to join Co3 Systems as chief technology officer this month. I began by asking him what attracted him to a relatively unknown company…
Reacting May Be Best IT Security Solution
Trying to predict the next security problem is the wrong way to go about things said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer at BT who was speaking at an event in Singapore.
“The more we try to predict, the more the bad guys react around us,” Schneier said. Contrary to popular IT security ideology, what was more important was the ability to react as well as mitigate and recover.
This attempt to predict where the next attack will come from is creating a gap between security and attackers where cyber criminals will be constantly evolving to develop and exploit new attack vectors with IT departments constantly playing catchup…
Anticipating Threats Ineffective in Enhancing Security
SINGAPORE—Companies looking to predict cyberthreats to fend off attacks will not improve their IT systems’ security robustness as the criminals responsible will evolve and develop their technologies accordingly.
Speaking at a seminar here Monday, Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer at BT, said technology has affected the balance of society and social mechanisms such as law and punishment, which help keep people in check so they will not commit crimes, online or otherwise.
For instance, the Internet has given rise to anonymity and made it easier for cybercriminals to perpetrate their attacks without getting caught, Schneier observed…
One Man's Crusade to End the Hysteria over Cyberwar
Bruce Schneier, a legend among hackers and security experts, is having trouble convincing the world that the threat of cyberwar is overstated. In 2010, the year after the US launched a Cyber Command division of its military, he lost a public debate on the subject. And in October, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said that the US should gird itself for a cyber Pearl Harbor . Yet Schneier is undeterred. Through countless essays, speeches and debates, he has tirelessly argued that what we should really be paying attention to is how we establish trust online…
Stick Punters' Mugs on E-banking Pages, That'll End Fraud – Schneier
Crypto guru urges creative thinking from security pros
Cryptography guru Bruce Schneier called for more creative thinking and a broader perspective as a means to tackle security problems.
For example, the music industry, faced with an explosion in online file-sharing, hired security pros to develop anti-piracy measures, such as digital rights management technology. But these inconvenienced punters while doing little or nothing to stem copyright infringement. A better approach was making songs affordable and easy to buy, a model that has since lined Apple’s deep pockets.
“This [the latter approach] is not something a security person would think up,” Schneier said at the RSA Europe conference. “Security professionals would be too focused on building a better door lock.”…
RSA Conference: Governments Trying to "Seize Control" of the Internet
A famed computer security expert believes governments are trying to seize control of the internet, but will fail in the long term to reach that goal.
Bruce Schneier, BT’s chief technology officer and author of several important books on security, said that governments that didn’t understand the internet were trying to take control of it. He looked at US proposals of creating an ‘internet kill-switch’, claiming that policy makers were crazy to even think of a single mechanism to shut-off all internet traffic.
He said: “You see these types of government proposals, and they come from law enforcement, lobbyists or the military, and we’re going to see more of those. Short-term we’re going to see a bunch of years where governments are going to seize more control over this dangerous ‘anarchistic net’ and rein it back in.”…
Schneier Calls for Societal Pressure to Fight Cyber Crime
Security guru Bruce Schneier calls for societal pressure to convince would-be hackers that their actions are not in their own interests
Cyber crime will not be resolved with technology alone, security guru Bruce Schneier warned at the RSA conference in London today. Societal pressure is also need to discourage people from becoming cyber criminals, he argued.
Security experts will always be catching up with criminals when it comes to technological exploits, argued Schneier, who is BT’s chief security technology officer. “Attackers have a natural advantage because they can make use of innovations faster and have no procurement pressure or institutional inertia,” he said.
Society therefore has a role to play in discouraging individuals from becoming ‘defectors’, Schneier argued. There are four potenital mechanisms for this, he explained…
RSA London 2012: Governments Will Fail in Bid to Control Internet, claims Bruce Schneier
The world’s governments are destined to fail in their attempts to control the internet, according to BT security expert Bruce Schneier.
Schneier claimed that the internet is currently going through a dark period, with legislators creating ill-conceived cyber policies that are damaging rather than helping online developments.
“Governments are starting to use it [the internet] for power,” said Schneier at a press conference in London.
“We’re hitting a period in internet history where governments are seizing more control; one where governments that don’t understand the internet are trying to interfere with it.”…
Trust: Ill-Advised in a Digital Age
Las Vegas
Bruce Schneier ordered a Coke, no ice, at the Rio casino on a Saturday afternoon. I ordered Diet Coke, also no ice, and handed the bartender an American Express card. He said he needed to see proof of identity. Credit cards are often stolen around here, and eight casino workers had recently been fired for not demanding ID, he quietly explained. The bartender wanted to keep his job.
Mr. Schneier, 49, is a student of interactions like this, offline and on. He is a cryptographer, blogger and iconoclast in the world of computer security, and his latest subject of inquiry is trust: how it is cultivated, destroyed and tweaked in the digital age…
Security Tips from Bruce Schneier
Bruce Schneier knows a thing or two about security. The author of multiple books on cryptography, Schneier is widely considered to be an expert on the subject of encryption as well as the broader topic of information security. So we jumped at the opportunity to sit down with him for an in-depth interview at the Black Hat 2012 conference in late July. Here are some of the highlights of what he had to say.
The State of Encryption: “Not that great, and getting worse”
Asked to share his view of the state of encryption in this new age of cloud computing, Schneier says: “It’s not that great, and it’s getting worse.”…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.