Alex Stamos
Director, Stanford Internet Observatory. Former Chief Security Officer at Facebook.
Tackling the Trust and Safety Crisis
Around the turn of the century, the technology industry faced a pretty basic problem: we had no idea how to write secure software. Every year brought the invention of completely new classes of software flaw, there was little training available in industry or the academy, and security was considered something you added with a firewall and antivirus.
Twenty years have past and, while things are far from perfect, we at least have a great deal more understanding of how to address core information security risks in complex software projects. The tech industry is now facing a whole set of new issues, ones involving our inability to build products that are safe, trustworthy, and respectful of user privacy when deployed to billions globally. Unlike before, however, this is not just a computer science problem but one that crosses into the worlds of sociology, psychology, political science, and anthropology.
In this talk, the speaker will draw from his deep well of experience making serious mistakes in this area to lay out some of the basic challenges facing industry and academia while humbly suggesting some possible ways forward. This time, we don't have decades to figure out how to do better.
Streaming\Recording Info: Not Available* from Cyberfest
A similar talk was given by Alex Stamos at the USENIX Security '19 event