Three of the largest engineering innovations for the next decade are based on sensors and communication: autonomous vehicles, implantable medical devices, and the smart grid. As a result, clearly, the major new security threats for the next decade will stem from, and target, these engineering systems. Unlike current threats, which are primarily limited to loss of data, privacy, and identity theft, these new threats have the potential to cause harm to human health, lives, and property. New solutions and technologies to protect sensors, and the information they provide, must be integrated into existing and future platforms of mobile phones, cars, ships, airplanes, drones, medical devices, robots, and infrastructure. The first part of this talk will discuss threats in this space, and the second part will discuss the controls—both those in place and those that will be needed–to mitigate these threats.

Threats to computers and information systems continue to grow as new threat vectors emerge with remarkable speed and regularity. In the cyber arena, unfortunately, the barriers to entry remain low, and the capacity and capabilities of adversaries are continually improving. In this webinar, we discuss existing and emerging threats to information systems, as well as key measures that can be instituted as a first level of defense. The threats detailed will be aligned with the needs and concerns of the defense industry, including theft of highly sensitive data, hardware trojans, and loss of control over critical systems. Beyond the general categories of threat—malware and ransomware, cross-site scripting and hardware trojans–we will be discussing such new concerns as smart contract flaws and ‘cloudhoppers,’ who sneak into the systems of companies that manage IT for other firms, and other growing threats.

The federal government has promulgated several regulations to protect public confidential public data as well as national security. The Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) is a set of cybersecurity regulations that the Department of Defense (DoD) imposes on external contractors and suppliers. The requirements seem quite straight forward—to provide adequate security and report cyber incidents quickly—but we will discuss the details of what “adequate security” really entails. In the first part of the webinar we will discuss the basic elements of risk analysis, including, assets, threats, vulnerabilities, and controls. In the second half, we discuss the key elements of the DFARS standards from DoD and what organizations need to do to be compliant and to pass a readiness assessment.

Threats to computers and information systems continue to grow as new threat vectors emerge with remarkable speed and regularity. In the cyber arena, unfortunately, the barriers to entry remain low, and the capacity and capabilities of adversaries are continually improving. In this webinar, we discuss existing and emerging threats to information systems, as well as key measures that can be instituted as a first level of defense. The threats detailed will be aligned with the needs and concerns of the defense industry, including theft of highly sensitive data, hardware trojans, and loss of control over critical systems. Beyond the general categories of threat—malware and ransomware, cross-site scripting and hardware trojans–we will be discussing such new concerns as smart contract flaws and ‘cloudhoppers,’ who sneak into the systems of companies that manage IT for other firms, and other growing threats.