Swarthmore College Department of Computer Science

The Liberal Arts (and Sciences) of Cybersecurity

a talk by Allan Friedman '02

Mon, Jan 27, 4:30pm, Science Center 199

Cybersecurity has come to dominate headlines, but perhaps no other policy issue has become as important as quickly, yet is so little understood. Moreover, thinking seriously about cybersecurity requires understanding a range of technical issues in computer science and engineering, while also incorporating important questions of economics, policy, law, and philosophy. This talk will review the current state of thinking about cybersecurity, and present several issues which require computer scientists to work with other disciplines to move forward.

Allan Friedman is a Visiting Scholar at the the Cyber Security Policy Research Institute in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at George Washington University, where he works on cybersecurity policy.

Wearing the hats of both a technologist and a policy scholar, his work spans computer science, public policy and the social sciences, and has addressed issues ranging from electronic medical records to telecommunications policy. His recent work has focused on the economic aspects of information security. He is the coauthor of the book "Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know" (Oxford University Press, 2014).