Entries Tagged "Schneier news"

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Security and Human Behavior (SHB 2017)

I’m in Cambridge University, at the tenth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior.

SHB is a small invitational gathering of people studying various aspects of the human side of security, organized each year by Ross Anderson, Alessandro Acquisti, and myself. The 50 or so people in the room include psychologists, economists, computer security researchers, sociologists, political scientists, political scientists, neuroscientists, designers, lawyers, philosophers, anthropologists, business school professors, and a smattering of others. It’s not just an interdisciplinary event; most of the people here are individually interdisciplinary.

The goal is maximum interaction and discussion. We do that by putting everyone on panels. There are eight six-person panels over the course of the two days. Everyone gets to talk for ten minutes about their work, and then there’s half an hour of questions and discussion. We also have lunches, dinners, and receptions—all designed so people from different disciplines talk to each other.

It’s the most intellectually stimulating conference of my year, and influences my thinking about security in many different ways.

This year’s schedule is here. This page lists the participants and includes links to some of their work. As he does every year, Ross Anderson is liveblogging the talks.

Here are my posts on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth SHB workshops. Follow those links to find summaries, papers, and occasionally audio recordings of the various workshops.

I don’t think any of us imagined that this conference would be around this long.

Posted on May 25, 2017 at 2:30 PM • View Comments

Commenting Policy for This Blog

Over the past few months, I have been watching my blog comments decline in civility. I blame it in part on the contentious US election and its aftermath. It’s also a consequence of not requiring visitors to register in order to post comments, and of our tolerance for impassioned conversation. Whatever the causes, I’m tired of it. Partisan nastiness is driving away visitors who might otherwise have valuable insights to offer.

I have been engaging in more active comment moderation. What that means is that I have been quicker to delete posts that are rude, insulting, or off-topic. This is my blog. I consider the comments section as analogous to a gathering at my home. It’s not a town square. Everyone is expected to be polite and respectful, and if you’re an unpleasant guest, I’m going to ask you to leave. Your freedom of speech does not compel me to publish your words.

I like people who disagree with me. I like debate. I even like arguments. But I expect everyone to behave as if they’ve been invited into my home.

I realize that I sometimes express opinions on political matters; I find they are relevant to security at all levels. On those posts, I welcome on-topic comments regarding those opinions. I don’t welcome people pissing and moaning about the fact that I’ve expressed my opinion on something other than security technology. As I said, it’s my blog.

So, please… Assume good faith. Be polite. Minimize profanity. Argue facts, not personalities. Stay on topic.

Schneier on Security is not a professional operation. There’s no advertising, so no revenue to hire staff. My part-time moderator—paid out of my own pocket—and I do what we can when we can. If you see a comment that’s spam, or off-topic, or an ad hominem attack, flag it and be patient. Don’t reply or engage; we’ll get to it. And we won’t always post an explanation when we delete something.

My own stance on privacy and anonymity means that I’m not going to require commenters to register a name or e-mail address, so that isn’t an option. And I really don’t want to disable comments.

I dislike having to deal with this problem. I’ve been proud and happy to see how interesting and useful the comments section has been all these years. I’ve watched many blogs and discussion groups descend into toxicity as a result of trolls and drive-by ideologues derailing the conversations of regular posters. I’m not going to let that happen here.

Posted on March 24, 2017 at 2:20 PM • View Comments

Security and Human Behavior (SHB 2016)

Earlier this week, I was at the ninth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior, hosted at Harvard University.

SHB is a small invitational gathering of people studying various aspects of the human side of security. The fifty or so people in the room include psychologists, economists, computer security researchers, sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, political scientists, neuroscientists, lawyers, anthropologists, business school professors, and a smattering of others. It’s not just an interdisciplinary event; most of the people here are individually interdisciplinary.

These are the most intellectually stimulating two days of my year; this year someone called it “Bruce’s brain in conference form.”

The goal is maximum interaction and discussion. We do that by putting everyone on panels. There are eight six-person panels over the course of the two days. Everyone gets to talk for ten minutes about their work, and then there’s half an hour of discussion in the room. Then there are lunches, dinners, and receptions—all designed so people meet each other and talk.

This page lists the participants and gives links to some of their work. As usual, Ross Anderson liveblogged the talks.

Here are my posts on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth SHB workshops. Follow those links to find summaries, papers, and audio recordings of the workshops.

Posted on June 3, 2016 at 1:36 PM • View Comments

I’m Writing a Book on Security

I’m writing a book on security in the highly connected Internet-of-Things world. Tentative title:

Click Here to Kill Everybody
Peril and Promise in a Hyper-Connected World

There are two underlying metaphors in the book. The first is what I have called the World-Sized Web, which is that combination of mobile, cloud, persistence, personalization, agents, cyber-physical systems, and the Internet of Things. The second is what I’m calling the “war of all against all,” which is the recognition that security policy is a series of “wars” between various interests, and that any policy decision in any one of the wars affects all the others. I am not wedded to either metaphor at this point.

This is the current table of contents, with three of the chapters broken out into sub-chapters:

  • Introduction
  • The World-Sized Web
  • The Coming Threats
    • Privacy Threats
    • Availability and Integrity Threats
    • Threats from Software-Controlled Systems
    • Threats from Interconnected Systems
    • Threats from Automatic Algorithms
    • Threats from Autonomous Systems
    • Other Threats of New Technologies
    • Catastrophic Risk
    • Cyberwar
  • The Current Wars
    • The Copyright Wars
    • The US/EU Data Privacy Wars
    • The War for Control of the Internet
    • The War of Secrecy
  • The Coming Wars
    • The War for Your Data
    • The War Against Your Computers
    • The War for Your Embedded Computers
    • The Militarization of the Internet
    • The Powerful vs. the Powerless
    • The Rights of the Individual vs. the Rights of Society
  • The State of Security
  • Near-Term Solutions
  • Security for an Empowered World
  • Conclusion

That will change, of course. If the past is any guide, everything will change.

Questions: Am I missing any threats? Am I missing any wars?

Current schedule is for me to finish writing this book by the end of September, and have it published at the end of April 2017. I hope to have pre-publication copies available for sale at the RSA Conference next year. As with my previous book, Norton is the publisher.

So if you notice me blogging less this summer, this is why.

Posted on April 29, 2016 at 1:02 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.