When you think of Baltimore, Maryland, you might immediately think of The Ravens, Edgar Allan Poe, or Old Bay Seasoning. Moving forward, I will always associate “BMore” (as the locals call it) with improved security across the public and private sectors, thanks to participating in the 18th International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security, ICCWS, which happened March 9th and 10th, 2023, at Towson University, in the heart of Baltimore county.
This unique event brings together academics, military professionals, government agencies, and professionals from all around the security world to discuss their research findings and the state of cybersecurity. All the sessions I attended were very informative, and I will be summarizing a few in this post, but the best part of this event was the lively hallway conversations and connections that were made. It is hard to imagine another event where Ph.D. candidates, developer advocates, and intelligence agency officers would get to share thoughts on the future of cyber threats while sharing a meal.
While there were a lot of different subjects covered in the two days of sessions, there were some themes that popped up across multiple talks.
Zero Trust
Most everyone working in security and DevOps by now is familiar with the notion of Zero Trust, the approach that denies all access by default. We apply this in practice by implementing “the principle of least privilege,” granting only enough access to let people and non-human entities get their work done and no more. In his talk “Can Zero Trust Restore Our Ailing Trust?” Justin Fanelli, Technical Director, Dept of Navy PEO Digital and Georgetown University, argues that for a lot of the industry, Zero Trust is just a buzzword at the moment, albeit the “Beatles of our current jargon.”
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