The conference “Cyber security, a national priority” was the second edition of the cycle of conferences “Innovation, Society and Technology” and brought together a panel of experts, students and people who work in this area. The event took place this Monday, November 20, in salão nobre (Técnico – Alameda campus).
Professor Arlindo Oliveira, president of Técnico, attended the conference and moderated the session. The experts shared the “dangers”, “gaps” and “national strategy” in cyber security. “We have designed a new transversal national strategy that will be as good as its application”, said António Gameiro Marques, General Director of the National Security Office. According to professor Pedro Veiga, coordinator of the National Cyber security Centre “some problems are beginning to appear and we must be very careful”.
Professor José Tribolet presented a “clear” solution to face these problems: a post-graduate course in cyber security at Técnico. “Portuguese society is unprepared for this threat”. Companies should enroll their workers in this course “because we need soldiers to combat cybernetic war and Técnico is accomplish the task of training these soldiers”.
Dr. Timóteo Menezes, Thales’ representative, agreed that “there is a lack of soldiers” and a “global lack of resources”. “But I see here a lot of potential cyber peacekeepers”, he added.
In a more casual tone, Pedro Adão, professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Técnico, shared the work carried out by his team – STT – which is among the twenty best university teams of information security. According to the professor “this shows that here, at Técnico, we learn how to deal with such problems”.
Several topics were addressed during the session, such as banking and healthy sectors as preferred black hat hacking targets, cyber crime industry and the lack of interest of companies in preparing themselves to face the challenges of digital society. “There are insane people who launch cyber attacks that hit the structure of an entire country just to cause disturbances”, said professor Pedro Abreu. “Security cannot be considered separately from all areas of a company”, pointed out professor José Tribolet, adding that “we still have to grow a lot and the role of engineering is key”.
“The problem exists between the keyboard and the chair”, noted António Gameiro Marques. “People are not aware of this, but some USB drives and network cables can be used to attack systems”, highlighted professor Pedro Adão. “We can not fight against Technology, but there are ethical issues that are within our reach”, concluded professor Pedro Adão.
