Apr 14, 2017
Mark Weatherford is an American cyber security professional who
has held extremely high positions in both the public and private
sector. He was appointed the first deputy under secretary for cyber
security at the US Department of Homeland Security from 2011-2013.
Mark brings a wealth of experience and insight into a subject that
all of us should be worried about in this day and age. He gives
examples of how things are unfolding in regards to the
cybersecurity and steps we can take to try and mitigate risk.
The basic infrastructure of the internet is essentially the same as
it was back in the 90’s. A lot of physical infrastructure hasn’t
really changed for most things since they were designed, however
there has been layers of technology added. Michael uses the Hoover
Dam as an example of old infrastructure with new technology layered
on and asks, “Is it possible for the dam’s security to be hacked?”
Mark says he always works from the viewpoint that absolutely
everything can be broken into.
Michael moves on to ask about Hillary Clinton’s home server and
what the scandal entailed. “Puzzling” is the word that Mark uses to
describe the situation. She hired a company to build an email
server and essentially put it physically in her basement but
managed it remotely. None of this made sense or seemed well thought
out. There are plenty of things you can do to protect
infrastructure and it didn’t seem that they put any of those
measures in place.
Michael and Mark end on discussing the idea that intelligence is
all about deception. This is one of the biggest challenges in
working in cyber security — figuring out what is true and what is
false.
In this episode of Trend Following Radio:
- Cyber hacking
- Hillary Clinton server scandal
- Podesta hacking
- Cyber security
- “Model what you admire”
- Partisanship in cyber security
- Game theory