International Conference on Cyber Conflict (CyCon) closed today after three and a half days of talks and workshops on active cyber defence. The conference brought together more than 450 people from 35 countries. The conference ran in two parallel tracks with one concentrating on the technical issues and another on the law and strategy questions.
The opening keynote was given by H. E. Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of the Republic of Estonia who reminded the audience the basic principles of Internet freedom and privacy, noting that we may have gone from worrying too little to worrying too much and we are seeing cyber issues where there are none. Dr Jamie Shea, NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges gave an overview on how NATO has and still is changing its perception of cyber.
The conference span over three and a half days with Tuesday as the pre-conference workshop day. Talks in two parallel tracks covered a wide spectrum of topics from IPV6 and Cloud Computing to ethics and biohacking. For the first time in CyCon’s history a special student award was given out to support and motivate junior researchers doing their studies in cyber defence. The winner of the student awards was Marco Lancini from the Politecnico di Milano.
Preparations for CyCon 2015 have already begun with a Call for Papers announced during the closing remarks. Next year’s CyCon will focus on the construction of the Internet and its potential future development. The conference solicits original unpublished research, applications and experience papers and the deadline for abstract submissions is 1 October 2014.
CyCon 2014 was supported by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE, technical sponsor), Microsoft (diamond sponsor), Intel Security, Cisco & Lancope, Verint (gold sponsors), IBM and Ixia (sponsors).
NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence is an International Military Organisation located in Tallinn, Estonia. It is not an operational centre and does not fall within the NATO command structure; it is guided and financed by the nations participating in its work. Centre’s 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.