Summary: Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Paul Mockapetris discuss the current state of online security. This program was recorded in collaboration with the Commonwealth Club of California, on October 4, 2010. Visit http://FORA.tv to view full-length video of any program featured in this podcast. For more topics on technology, visit http://fora.tv/topic/technology. Viruses, spyware, spam, phishing, zombie machines. Several years ago, we might have thought of these as just a nuisance, and their perpetrators as mostly underemployed kids. Today, cybercrime is worth billions of dollars to loosely organized networks of criminals that prey on individuals, businesses and governments with malicious or profit-seeking intent. What are some of the current threats, and how is industry responding to them? What new threats might we expect in the coming years? Is the Internet's health partly a result of misaligned incentives, where those who cause the damage don't bear its costs? How can we change that? What more should industry, government and individuals be doing to protect the network and, ultimately, ourselves? - Commonwealth Club of California Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google. In this role, he is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies to support the development of advanced Internet-based products and services from Google. He is also an active public face for Google in the Internet world. Widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. Paul Mockapetris, the inventor of the Domain Name System (DNS), is Chief Scientist and Chairman of the Board at Nominum, Inc. His mission is to help guide DNS and IP addressing to the next stage. Mockapetris created DNS in the 1980s at USC's Information Sciences Institute, where he was later the Director of ISI's High Performance Computing and Communications Division. Esther Dyson is a long-time catalyst of start-ups in information technology in the U.S. and other markets, including Russia. Since selling her company, EDventure Holdings, to CNET Networks in 2004, she has taken on newer challenges in private aviation and space as well as in health care (as a director of 23andMe, a consumer genetics company). Dyson's IT investments have included Flickr and del.icio.us (both sold to Yahoo!), and Medstory (sold to Microsoft), as well as Meetup Inc., Eventful.com, Boxbe and Voxiva; she sits on the boards of the latter four companies. Bruce McConnell has been Counselor to the Deputy Under Secretary for National Protection and Programs Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security since June 2009.
