February 7, 2012

The Big Euro Freeze & The Munich Security Conference.

A big hello from Munich!

More news, and this time I’d call it ‘The big Euro freeze’.

Europe is slowly icing over as a result of Siberian freezing weather blasting across the continent. Eastern Europe (Romania and Bulgaria) has been buried under meters of snow, the cold in Germany is bitter; in France it’s biting; England has also had its fair share and has cancelled a number of flights. I can only guess what is happening in Scandinavia and Poland. In Munich today it’s -9C, and it’s supposed to get down to -19C tonight, but the Bavarians are undaunted!

The photos are not mine, seeing as how I was at the Munich Security Conference all day. I’m a newbie here – I’ve never been involved at this level before (well, if you discount the London Conference on Cyberspace and Davos), but everything seemed to go well! I was on the roundtable, a few meetings and interviews. Here is my observations of the proceedings.

The Munich Conference on Security (the 48th) is a major international gathering where the big geopolitical players meet once a year to discuss IMPORTANT security issues. A fair bit of Munich is blocked off by military and police cordons behind which you can see the likes of Kissinger, Clinton (Hilary), Lavrov, Lieberman along with various heads of state and their ministers strolling around. You can view the full program and people involved here.

My panel was called “Cybersecurity: Is Offense the Best Defense?” The list of panel members lived up to the promise of its name:

  • Michael V. Hayden, Former Director, Central Intelligence Agency; former Director, National Security Agency
  • Eugene Kaspersky, Chairman and CEO, Kaspersky Lab
  • Giampaolo Di Paola, Minister of Defence, Italian Republic
  • Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission; Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, European Union
  • Thomas Ilves (Moderator), President, Republic of Estonia

Munich security conference

It was rather amusing to see that all the panelists were of the same opinion on most issues when it came to internet security: anonymity (the main risk factor), web-borne threats to countries’ critical infrastructure (with potentially catastrophic consequences), the inability to effectively protect against cyber weapons (it is only possible to talk of a relative level of security), the fact that cyberspace is a whole new world and requires a unique approach, etc.

I got the impression that 50% of what General Hayden (a very intelligent giant of a man and an excellent speaker) said quoted what I was saying 2-3 years ago (that was probably not the case, but our stance is virtually identical on most points). A very welcome addition to proceedings was the presence of numerous representatives of the world’s major publications, lending a truly global resonance.

I think this year’s conference was a major breakthrough and will impact on the development of IT security throughout the world. Heads of states and senior ministers from all over the world made it perfectly clear just how important the issue of national and transnational IT security is, just how bad things are in this sphere and just how urgently the situation needs to be addressed. We await further developments.

Official photos of the panel.

Video clips of the panel discussion and interviews will appear here.

And on that note I bid you farewell. Another journey beckons!

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email
(Required)

READ COMMENTS 3
Comments 2 Leave a note

    Mário Madrigrano Jaber

    Dear Eugene Kaspersky …

    Today we have the scenario of a war called “fifth generation warfare.”
    What does that mean?
    It’s practically a war for economic gain and not war is waged with conventional weapons. They are tools for mental conditioning of the people through customs and habits acquired through many of whom just the virtual content of the internet.
    Along with the subliminal messages that do the work of inducing the masses consumption patterns dictated by the “owners of the game”, both on the internet and the television media, cyber attacks also come espionage, data theft and all kinds of attacker system “disguised” something natural “harmless.”
    The main strategy that dictates all these stratagems attack, espionage, induction and control field is the psycho-social populations of the moderately educated.
    The analfabetizados or ignorant of intelligence below the median are not the problem of this “war”, so of course they are taken by the tide of the game naturally without become aware of anything.
    What bothers me and many governments both in Europe and the U.S. is the new terrorism already in frank expansion on the Internet, “Cyber ​​Terrorism”.
    This new form of virtual terrorism in addition to use of all resources “cyber criminals” existing uses are also subliminal psychic induction techniques in order to spread all the way counter-information and rumors that cause boatarias including instability in the stock prices of global economic markets.
    We must develop a greater partnership between the governments of friendly nations aligned and “scientists” of segments of mathematics, quantum physics, computer science and psychiatry.
    You ask me of course …
    Psychiatry? But why this science of human medicine?
    Because it is just with knowledge of psychiatry that can identify the various control techniques and psychic induction used in these cyber attacks.
    This all intelligence agencies of these governments block antiterror course already know and will join efforts and scientific talent in order to develop defense mechanisms active for this cyber world terrorism.
    This is where scientific men of the caliber like you, “Eugene” and his colleagues aligned countries can together develop new technologies for the defense of virtual nations.
    Eugene in this world there is a constant struggle of “good versus evil.”
    The Well or the progress of civilizations with a reformulation of human thought in the sense of building a society more just and equitable to all people on Earth.
    Evil only want the economic and psychological enslavement of people dipping them in perpetual intellectual and material poverty in the midst of epidemics, hunger and addictions.

    Thank you for your attention dear friend “Eugene Kaspersky.”

    Greetings …

    Mário Madrigrano Jaber

    1
    Reply to conversation

    Mário Madrigrano Jaber

    Dear Eugene Kaspersky …(rectified):

    Today we have the scenario of a war called “fifth generation warfare.”
    What does that mean?
    It’s practically a war for economic gain and not war is waged with conventional weapons. They are tools for mental conditioning of the people through customs and habits acquired through many of whom just the virtual content of the internet.
    Along with the subliminal messages that do the work of inducing the masses consumption patterns dictated by the “owners of the game”, both on the internet and the television media, cyber attacks also come espionage, data theft and all kinds of attacker system “disguised” something natural “harmless.”
    The main strategy that dictates all these stratagems attack, espionage, induction and control field is the psycho-social populations of the moderately educated.
    The illiterate or ignorant of intelligence below the median are not the problem of this “war”, so of course they are taken by the tide of the game naturally without become aware of anything.
    What bothers me and many governments both in Europe and the U.S. is the new terrorism already in frank expansion on the Internet, “Cyber Terrorism”.
    This new form of virtual terrorism in addition to use of all resources “cyber criminals” existing uses are also subliminal psychic induction techniques in order to spread all the way counter-information and rumors that cause including instability in the stock prices of global economic markets.
    We must develop a greater partnership between the governments of friendly nations aligned and “scientists” of segments of mathematics, quantum physics, computer science and psychiatry.
    You ask me of course …
    Psychiatry? But why this science of human medicine?
    Because it is just with knowledge of psychiatry that can identify the various control techniques and psychic induction used in these cyber attacks.
    This all intelligence agencies of these governments block antiterrorism course already know and will join efforts and scientific talent in order to develop defense mechanisms active for this cyber world terrorism.
    This is where scientific men of the caliber like you, “Eugene” and his colleagues aligned countries can together develop new technologies for the defense of virtual nations.
    Eugene in this world there is a constant struggle of “good versus evil.”
    The Well or the progress of civilizations with a reformulation of human thought in the sense of building a society more just and equitable to all people on Earth.
    Evil only want the economic and psychological enslavement of people dipping them in perpetual intellectual and material poverty in the midst of epidemics, hunger and addictions.

    Thank you for your attention dear friend “Eugene Kaspersky.”

    Greetings …

    Mário Madrigrano Jaber

    1
    Reply to conversation
Trackbacks 1

Cassandra Complex… Not for Much Longer. | Nota Bene

Read track
Leave a note
Facebook

November 15, 2024

Space museum extraordinaire – with an 18+ twist at the end.

It’s been ages since the last time I wrote about outer space – too long; for space is cool far out!… Exploration of extraterrestrial space in any form, manned or not – plus cosmonautics, astrophysics and telescopes at the top of volcanoes, it’s all extremely important for the whole of mankind – and fantastically interesting for the […]

November 12, 2024

Kamchatka’s old Route 264: the views therefrom – top-drawer.

Forty kilometers to the south of Kronotsky there are two “cult” Kamchatkan volcanisms: (i) the Uzon volcanic caldera… -> …and the famous Valley of Geysers -> This year, instead of choppering in, looking about for a bit, then choppering off again, we decided to do a multi-day trek along the old Soviet Route No. 264… […]

November 7, 2024

Winter’s coming; best get the beers in then.

Hi folks! I’m back home in Moscow – where it seems the fall has been cancelled! I flew out in summer – and flew back in winter! -> The contrast was remarkable – from the tropics to this. And winter’s still a month away! All this talk of global warming? It doesn’t seem to apply […]

November 6, 2024

Kamchatka-2024 – pt. 5: Kizimen… now and then.

It was farewell to what is possibly the world’s remotest hotel complex, and off we choppered south to our next Kamchatkan volcanic wonder – Kizimen (pronounced KizEEmen). And here she is – the view from the south: And from the north -> What differentiates this particular volcano of Kamchatka from others are the two lakes […]

November 2, 2024

Another country (Indonesia) – another volcano (Ijen).

Just like in Kamchatka, in Indonesia (where last week we had our super-successful Security Analyst Summit), there are a great many really cool hot volcanoes! I should know, since I’ve checked some of them out a few times – in 2018 around New Year, and last year after a press event (when we scaled Mount […]

More

Travel Vlog

You might also like…