Report From The First Michigan Cyber Security Summit

LANSING – By any measure, the first Michigan Cyber Security Summit was a total success. It drew so many participants that registration had to be cut-off the week before the event. It provided outstanding presentations from nationally known speakers including Cornelius Tate, the newly appointed Director of the Department of Homeland Security�??s National Cyber Security Division, Allen Paller, SANS Director of Research and Symantec’s John McCumber, who is the developer of the influential McCumber model for information security systems.

The venue at Lansing Community College�??s West Campus was outstanding and the various presentations and panel discussions went off without a hitch all day. Even the lunch and snacks were tasty.

There were approximately 200 attendees at the event, most of whom were State and county government employees. After initial introductions from Ken Theis who is the State�??s Director of IT and Brigadier General Michael McDaniel, who is Governor Granholm�??s Homeland Security Advisor, Paller did a keynote that outlined the current state of cyberspace. It was a dark and somewhat pessimistic message and it immediately established that cyber security is a very serious concern.

Paller�??s talk was followed by an expert panel that presented ways that government can respond to the challenges within the resource constraints that most agencies face. Besides suggesting relationship building and information sharing, this discussion also touched on various policy-based models for building a robust information assurance capacity.

The group was then split into concurrent sessions. One session involved various experts who discussed the ins-and-outs of defending your network. The other session focused on the legal and compliance ramifications of incidents and incident response. Both of these provided substantive and detailed advice.

Cornelius Tate, who is the Director of the DHS Division that is specifically responsible for the defense of America�??s cyber infrastructure, provided a very wide-ranging lunchtime keynote. He briefed participants on most of the current initiatives underway in that critical unit and tied those directly to contributions from the State of Michigan.

Then the group split into concurrent sessions for the afternoon. In one session, McCumber and other experts discussed potential strategic responses. It included remarks by McCumber about current strategies for consolidation of efforts at the national level as well as a presentation on collaborative efforts in higher education, presented by the NSA sponsored International Cyber Security Coalition (ICSEC). The other session focused on cybersecurity issues associated with collaborative technologies. In it, representatives from McAfee pointed out a range of issues associate with securing those technologies.

The Summit concluded with a summary panel discussion led by Dan Lohrmann, who was just named CISO of the year by SC Magazine. This group of experts presented various practical solutions that State and local government entities in Michigan have already adopted to deal with the challenge of securing the State infrastructure. That included a presentation of a survey by McCumber, which outlined three areas of high importance in the effort to secure cyber space. One of those was the need for an educated workforce and so representatives from ICSEC specifically outlined how higher education has leveraged cooperation between community colleges and NSA national centers of excellence to meet that challenge.

Following the Summit, participants were optimistic that the foundations had been laid to push Michigan to the forefront in the challenge to ensure cybersecurity for its citizens. People leaving the meeting were both upbeat and energized by the opportunity to gather and discuss these important issues and it was easy to conclude that this is only the first of many events of this type. Dan Lohrmann and the State of Michigan are to be commended for their foresight and vision.

This column was written by Dan Shoemaker, Ph.D.,

University of Detroit Mercy

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