Stories

When the Association for Community Growth – Silicon Valley (ACGSV) was putting together a panel of cybersecurity experts from SpearTip, Exponent, and Wipro to share insights with their group of C-suite leaders, they reached out to Santa Clara University. Computer Science and Engineering Associate Professor Ahmed Amer were tapped as moderator, and his department colleague Assistant Professor Yuhong Liu, and Markkula Center for Applied Ethics Director of Internet Ethics Program Irina Raicu, were invited as panelists. Following are some key takeaways from the evening:

Organizations are woefully unprepared for intrusion events that will happen. • It takes on average 55 days to detect that a network has been compromised. • The majority of security breaches are caused by human error; we need to do human factor testing. • When you connect everything together, the security level is not decided by the most secure point, it is decided by the most vulnerable point; so, security needs to be built into smart device operating systems, not added on. •  Corporations in the United States are collecting far too much data and are not securing it; we need to hold corporations and regulators accountable. • Companies should perform a data inventory of what kind of data exists, whose responsibility it is to manage it, how it is shared, and have risk management plans in place. • Universities need to have courses covering different aspects of security in relation to computer networks, operating systems, programming languages, and beyond.