Government summit to discuss cybersecurity threats

Government representatives and business leaders will meet in Texas on Tuesday to discuss how to deal with global cybersecurity threats.

The goal of the three-day EastWest Institute (EWI) Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit is to establish how public and private sector leaders can collectively respond to electronic attacks and secure the world’s digital infrastructure.

Electronic attacks around the world have seen confidential information and financial data compromised, and official web sites crippled. The Summit plans to address growing fears that cybercriminals could use the internet to paralyse financial systems or government services.

“Nations have well established rules of the game on land, sea, air and in outer space. There is a significant lack of such rules in the fifth common domain—cyberspace,” said the EWI agenda.

“The Summit is the first effort to bring the diverse high level constituencies together to map the dangers and areas of cooperation.”

Four hundred business leaders, technical experts and national security officials will be attending the Summit, according to the agenda.

Speakers will include: US president Barack Obama’s special assistant and cybersecrity coordinator, Howard Schmidt, as well as his national security advisor, James Jones; European Network and Information Security Agency director, Udo Helmbrecht; Data Security Council of India chief executive Kamlesh Bajaj; France National Defence secretary general Francis Delon; Japan National Information Security Cabinet Secretariat Yasuo Sakamoto, and China Internet Affairs Bureau director Liu Zhengrong.

Dell chief executive Michael Dell, BT chef security officer Bruce Schneier and MySpace chief security officer Hemanshu Nigam, will also be speaking at the event to discuss how the public and private sector can partner to prevent and respond to security threats.