Last Friday Next Peak Co-Founder Greg Rattray led an Evil Minds Workshop that brought together technology experts from the private sector, government, and academia to discuss the most likely technological trends that will shape a major cyber- attack in the year 2025. This will be the first in a series of posts exploring scenarios from the workshop, where we imagine what the next major cyber-attack will look like, the likely technological drivers, and potential areas for operational collaboration.
Greg serves as the current Executive Director of the New York Cyber Task Force, which is hosted by Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. This second iteration of the Task Force was installed at the beginning of 2020, and it builds on the findings of the first Task Force on Building a Defensible Cyberspace by exploring ways to deepen public-private operational collaboration to protect US cyberspace from national security level cyber threats. We labelled the workshop an “Evil Minds” gathering as we asked technology experts to work through the techniques and technologies they would use to conduct severe but plausible cyber-attack scenarios. Greg has previously conducted “Evil Minds” workshops in his capacity as Chief Security Advisor of ICANN, and the format serves to illuminate concrete challenges to defending networks in an effort to identify opportunities for increased operational collaboration.
Operational collaboration through private-public-partnerships can create flexible cyber security solutions that leverage the agility and expertise of the private sector with the spending and staying power of the government. As technological drivers like artificial intelligence (AI), 5G networks, the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, deepfakes and facial recognition technology become more advanced and widespread, operational collaboration can enhance solutions to national security level cyber issues by leveraging joint operations and capabilities through public-private partnerships (PPPs). Deepening operational collaboration is one aspect of the range of policy advocacy issues that Next Peak’s founders are involved in to improve cyberspace for the nation. This thought leadership not only supports Next Peak’s work by improving the cyber landscape for all, it also carries through in our work as we help companies defend networks and meet cyber challenges head-on.
