‘Expert Opinion’ Cyber Insights for 12th October from The National Cyber Skills Centre
What advice does a genuine expert give on cybersecurity?
When the political history books are written the comment by the former Justice Secretary, Michael Gove given during the Brexit campaign that “Britain has had enough of experts” may just be his professional epitaph.
I disagree with Mr Gove on this point and that when making decisions of great magnitude the wise course of action to take is to assimilate the facts from experts in the particular field of interest in order to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.
It is however relatively rare that you get to ask such an expert and when the opportunity arises it has to be taken. Fortunately for me such an opportunity arose earlier this week at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. The annual festival brings together a wide variety of authors, some well knowns, others less so into a ten-day smorgasbord of literary themed events. One such event was titled ‘How Big Is Big Brother’ and covered off the topic of how intelligence agencies have to balance surveillance with civil liberties.
Hosted by the philosopher Julian Baggini, the former Chair of the UK Intelligence and Security Committee, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, explained how this fine balance was struck. Having been in the most senior positions of government, including Secretary of State for Defence, he has intimate knowledge of the threats that the UK faced. Obviously I wondered what his view would be on the current threat from cybercrime, cyber terrorism and other cyber related issues. Sadly, I couldn’t ask him during the Q&A session at the event, but did grab a few words with him afterwards,
Read the rest over at Cyber Insights, brought to you by the National Cyber Skills Centre.
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