Trust in cybersecurity: a building block or a unifying concept?

20Nov
14:00 20th November 2017 ( Michaelmas Term 2017 )
LTB

Cybersecurity encompasses a set of diverse problems that are difficult to resolve due to its multi-disciplinary nature. The broad definition of cybersecurity encompasses a range of subfields, from computer and network security to cryptography, psychology, human behavior, economics, policy, and international norms. The interplay of the subjects is clearly important for the theory and practice in cybersecurity, but the underlying relationships between the components remain elusive, making it harder to define cybersecurity as a science.

Trust is a foundational concept in cybersecurity, and potentially its unifying force, but the link is not straightforward. People develop trust in other people, polices, information and conventional products in ways that don't easily translate to the models used to define trust between devices and networks or between organisations or between organisations and their employees. Yet the broad definition of cybersecurity include a wide range of diverse contexts.

The talk will examine trust in a number of different domains. From the human side of trust, to cryptographically-supported trusted systems, to policies that help maintain trust, a broad view on the topic will be presented. What are the foundations of the individual’s trust in technology and what are the consequences of the lack of trust? How can trust between systems depend on subtle differences in the integrated circuits in their hardware? Can technical trust be nuanced, allowing a system to trust another system a little or a lot, depending on the circumstances? How is trust misused by cyber criminals, and how can technology and cyber norms stop them? How is trust connected to privacy? We will touch upon many of these questions. Like cybersecurity, trust is complex and multi-faceted, but it is a concept that is easier to define and one that can help explain many successes and failures in cybersecurity.

Speaker bio

Claire Vishik is a Senior Director for Global Cybersecurity at Intel. Her work focuses on hardware security, Trusted Computing, privacy enhancing technologies, applied cryptography and related technology and policy areas. Claire is a member of the Permanent Stakeholders Group (Advisory Board) of the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA). She is on the Board of Directors of the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) and Trust in Digital Life (TDL) and a Council Member of the Information Security Forum. Claire has served on advisory and review boards of a number of organizations and was part research initiatives in security and privacy in Europe, Asia, and the US, convened by, e.g., NIST or the Royal Society. She is the author of a large number of papers and an inventor on 30+ pending and granted U.S. patents. Prior to joining Intel, Claire worked at Schlumberger Laboratory for Computer Science and AT&T Laboratories. She received her Ph.D from the University of Texas at Austin.