Howard Schmidt to keynote inaugural conference on cloud security management

The International Confernece on Cloud Security Management brings together a diverse group of international researchers, practitioners and academics to discuss emerging concerns about securing information in the cloud and find ways to collaborate on potential solutions. ICCSM 2013 will be held October 17-18 on the University of Washington campus and is hosted by the UW Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity (CIAC).

Howard Schmidt, who keynotes the two-day conference, is the former cybersecurity advisor to President Obama and served as the vice chair of President Bush’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. While at the Bush White House, he assisted in the creation of the “US National Strategy to Secure CyberSpace.” Schmidt now heads Ridge Schmidt Cyber LLC.

The conference includes topics on privacy, awareness of threats, keeping the cloud safe, adoption of cloud use, encryption, and records management. The Cloud Security Alliance, Seattle Chapter, is sponsoring a one-day Industry track on October 17th. A specific aim of this Industry track is to bring together practitioners and academics working in this important field to facilitate discussions around the current challenges in cloud security management, and foster cross-pollination of ideas between practitioners and academics.

Other speakers include Luciana Duranti, chair of archival studies at the University of British Columbia and Jim Reavis, head of the Cloud Security Alliance. Duranti is director of InterPARES, a multi-national and multi-disciplinary research project studying the long-term preservation of authentic electronic records. Reaves was recently named one of the Top 10 cloud computing leaders by SearchCloudComputing.com.

Conference organizers point to WikiLeaks, which demonstrated the ease with which a massive set of confidential documents, collected and maintained in digital form, can be disseminated. They believe the move to the cloud poses an even greater challenge, by aggregating massive amounts of information and opening greater vulnerabilities. The conference provides a venue to better understand cloud security implications.

Register to attend ICCSM 2013.

About the Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity (CIAC) and Cloud Security Alliance
The University of Washington CIAC is an interdisciplinary center committed to educated security professionals, conducting innovative research through broad collaborations, and providing educational outreach to raise public awareness of information assurance. CIAC, directed by Barbara Endicott-Popovsky, is a DHS/NSA Center for Academic Excellence in Information Assurance education with a research designation. CIAC partners with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and multiple departments within the University of Washington and is housed at the UW Information School.

Cloud Security Alliance, Seattle Chapter, serves as the nexus for Cloud Security ensuring cloud computing is appropriately secure for all providers and users.