Playing Games With Chimaras

Here we are in 2021, collectively spending billions of dollars each year on cyber-security, and what to show for it? Our daily lives impacted with supply-chain interruptions from ransomware, major data breaches giving us all free credit monitoring, etc. We have created machines now that are more complex than we will ever be able to fathom, and are in the situation of trying to ensure they operate as expected. In the past, cyber-security has been compared with poker or chess, and by playing the wrong game, we will never see an impact; in this talk I will argue that security is both more simple and at the same time more complex, and requires multiple strategies to succeed. After laying out these strategies, I will conclude by stepping back and offering an optimistic view on how security has driven progress and stability, and how we can frame our roles as enablers as opposed to cost centers. Jacob Torrey Jacob is the Head of Labs at Thinkst Applied Research. Prior to that he managed the HW/FW/VMM security team at AWS, and was a Program Manager at DARPA's Information Innovation Office (I2O). At DARPA he managed a cyber security R&D portfolio including the Configuration Security, Transparent Computing, and Cyber Fault-tolerant Attack Recovery programs. Starting his career at Assured Information Security, he led the Computer Architectures group performing bespoke research into low-level systems security and programming languages. When not in front of the computer, he enjoys trail running, volunteering as a firefighter/EMT, and walking his dog many miles per day.