400 experts from all over the world gather in Tallinn, Estonia from 6-8 June for the fourth International Conference on Cyber Conflict (CyCon) organised by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence. The conference topic, Military and Paramilitary Activities in Cyberspace, is disserted from the aspects of law and policy, strategy and technology.
The topic of the fourth conference was chosen to reflect the ever-changing nature of cyberspace. “The number of cyber conflicts keeps rising and it is important to understand who the actors in these events are, how to classify these events and participants, and how to interpret such events,” commented Colonel Ilmar Tamm, Director of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence. “One of the aims of our conferences is to bring together people from different areas and give them more insight to the other aspects of cyber,” he added.
Speakers and participants come from a wide range of disciplines, from law professors to politicians, from IT experts to strategists. Among the speakers in Law & Policy Track are Professor Dr Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg who will talk about territorial sovereignty and neutrality in cyberspace, Michael N. Schmitt who will talk about the meaning of an armed attack in cyberspace, and Jason Healey who will talk about the political considerations in regard of neutrality and cyberspace. Technical Track will contain a mix of practitioner and researcher presentations and discussions, among them Professor Thomas M. Chen’s “A Game Theoretic View of Stuxnet and Its Implications”, Felix Lindner’s “Preparing a Military Cyber Attack” and Ilias Chantzos’ “Cyber Attack Case Study”. Strategy Breakout Session will view the cyber conflict from the conceptual perspective and among the speakers are Dr Samuel Liles (“Applying Traditional Military Principles to Cyber Warfare”), Jeff Bardin (“Iran and Cyber”) and Timothy L. Thomas (“The Three Faces of the Cyber Dragon”). On Friday, a high level cyber attack scenario discussion will take place where a round of experts walks the listeners through the key points of a realistic cyber attack scenario.
The conference main event takes place from 6-8 June, but one day earlier on 5 June, number of workshops takes place. The workshops vary from introductory course in computers and networks, designed especially for law and policy experts, to advanced malware analysis aimed at computer forensics investigators and incident responders.
CyCon 2012 is supported by IEEE, Cisco, Gamma International and Microsoft.
NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence is one of many NATO Centres of Excellence. Its mission is to enhance the capability, cooperation and information sharing among NATO, its member nations and partners in cyber defence by virtue of education, research and development, lessons learned and consultation.