June 11th, 2021 meeting

ABSTRACT

It’s time to cut our losses and replace our network computing model with something completely different.

As the tech industry pushes businesses into adopting their versions of digital transformation, the heart of all technology is still based on IP, which dates back to 1983. Trying to secure networks by adding layer after layer of security up and down the TCP/IP stack and down into the hardware layers is not working and will not scale. Even at the developer layer, where all this transformation is occurring, attackers are deep into their code repositories and loading malware through their build servers (such as in the SolarWinds Orion patch update that was introduced to 1800 downstream clients and infiltrated more than 100 high-level government intelligence and tech agencies in the US).

We need to figure out a new way to network. What do we replace IP with that is both more efficient and naturally secure (versus trusting the way IP is)? That should be the biggest question on everyone’s mind who’s working toward digital transformation.

Will AI come to the rescue or is it just another technology that can be used against us? What about Quantum networking? Can we move data faster than light more securely than IP transport? Can we somehow return ownership of data to the humans behind that data in the process?

In this session, Deb Radcliff raises provocative questions about future networking and access technologies. So be prepared to answer questions. For example, will we ever actually replace IP? Is AI truly autonomous? Would you take a human chip implant if it were the only means to access your data? If so, what would be your security requirements?

Radcliff will also tell stories of how she became the industry’s first beat reporter starting in 1996 after assisting Jon Littman with research for his best-selling book, “The Fugitive Game,” about hacker on the run, Kevin Mitnick. She will share her experiences and the many colorful characters she’s met from the days before we had cybercops and information security programs.

These characters and experiences are also fictionalized in book I of her cyberthriller series, Breaking Backbones: Information is power, which takes place in the near future (available at Amazon, her publisher (free shipping), and all booksellers). In it, hackers rise up against GlobeCom who takes over the world through human chip implants. She’s nearing completion of book II, “Information Should Be Free,” part of which delves into super smart AI and future networking—and that’s why she’ll be picking your brains around these tough subjects.

BIOGRAPHY

Deb Radcliff is an author, speaker and analyst with extensive background in cybersecurity and cybercrime reporting. In 1996, after researching a best-selling book about computer hacker, Kevin Mitnick authored by Jon Littman, she decided to make cybercrime a beat. At first, she relied on gray and white hat hackers to give her the scoop on hacking techniques and then she built relationships with newly-minted cyberagents and leaders at the FBI, several agencies within DoD, the Secret Service, CIA, NYPD and many other local and federal agencies. Her articles are cited in numerous research papers and college textbooks, and she’s won two Neal Awards for investigative reporting and was runner up for a third. She’s spoken at West Point, HOPE 2000 and other events, and is currently speaking regularly in online venues. She also stood up an Analyst Program at SANS Institute and ran it for 15 years until April 2020.

Today, as a cybersecurity analyst and author, she writes for CSO and manages her own blog OnlineCrimeBytes, runs the Shift Left Academy content program. In April 2021, Radcliff published her first cyberthriller book, Breaking Backbones: Information is Power. The book is part one in a three-part fictional series set in the not-too-distant future when a powerful entity called GlobeCom takes over the world through human chip implants and the hackers mount a coordinated defense to break GlobeCom’s network backbone.