Sadie Creese, Jamie Saunders & Charles Godfray in conversation: "Emerging technology and systemic risk – maintaining a secure and resilient digital infrastructure as we build back better"

Past Event

Date
 11 March 2021, 5:00pm - 6:00pm

Location
 Online

Event Recording:

The pandemic has accelerated digitisation across many sectors of the economy and society.

It is hard to imagine how many countries could have implemented lockdown measures to control the virus without the availability of digital technology to maintain at least a degree of economic and social activity. This technology has been remarkably resilient in the face of the increased demand. While there has been a perceptible increase in criminal activity seeking to exploit our increased dependence on IT during the pandemic, overall our systems and networks have held up well. This provides some confidence that the significant investment that government and business have made in operational resilience and cybersecurity over the past 10 years have paid off. However, future technology will bring a digital world of increased complexity, pace, scale and interdependence that will overwhelm many of the risk mitigations that are currently deployed. Without interventions now, it will be difficult to maintain the integrity of and trust in the technology on which we increasingly depend.

How confident can we be that the technology will prove equally resilient and secure in the event of a future major shock? In particular, is our collective approach to managing cyber risks sustainable in the face of the major technology trends taking place in the near future?

Join Professor Sadie Creese and Dr Jamie Saunders, Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre (GCSCC), as they discuss this with Professor Sir Charles Godfray and the steps that need to be taken by technologists, businesses, government and the international community to ensure that our digital infrastructure can continue to provide the level of resilience and security we need.

Creese Sadie

Professor Sadie Creese
Founding Director, Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre

Sadie Creese is Professor of Cyber Security in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford. Elsewhere in Oxford, she is a member of the faculty of the Blavatnik School Executive Public Leaders Programme, and is a regular contributor to the leadership programmes and MBA teaching of the Said Business School.

Her current research portfolio includes: threat modelling and detection with particular interest in the insider threat and threat from AI, visual analytics for cybersecurity, risk propagation logics and communication, resilience strategies for business, privacy requirements, vulnerability of distributed ledgers and block-chains, understanding cyber-harm and how it emerges for single organisations, nations and the potential for systemic cyber-risk, and the Cyber Security Capacity Maturity Model for Nations.

She is Principal Investigator on the AXIS sponsored project “Analysing Cyber-Value-at-Risk, Residual Risk and models for Systemic Cyber-Risk” focused on developing a method for predicting potential harms arising from cyber-attacks. She leads the Oxford team’s collaboration with the World Economic Forum’s Shaping the Future of Cybersecurity and Digital Trust Platform, research sponsored by AXIS, which is considering emerging technologies and the cybersecurity challenges that world leaders will need to address in the near and far future – part of the Platform’s Futures Series – “Futures Series: Cybercrime 2025”. Sadie was also co-Chair of the Lloyds Register Foundation sponsored Foresight review of cyber security for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), which was focused on operational cybersecurity technology gaps in future IIoT environments.

Sadie is the founding Director of the Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre (GCSCC) at the Oxford Martin School, where she continues to serve as a Director conducting research into what constitutes national cybersecurity capacity, working with countries and international organisations around the world. She was the founding Director of Oxford’s Cybersecurity network launched in 2008 and now called CyberSecurity@Oxford, a member of the World Economic Forum’s Cyber Security Centre’s Strategic Advisory Board, and was a Technical Advisor to the Government of Japan (GOJ) and the World Economic Forum joint project on International Data Flow Governance ‘Advancing the Osaka Track’.

Jamie Saunders

Dr Jamie Saunders
strategic security consultant

Dr Jamie Saunders is a strategic security consultant and visiting professor at UCL. The majority of his career has been spent in UK Government, including GCHQ, Cabinet Office, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the National Crime Agency. As Director at the International Cyber Policy at FCO, he was responsible for the establishment of the UK’s cyber security capacity building programme, which (amongst other things) led to the creation of the Oxford capacity centre.

At the NCA his roles included Director of the National Cyber Crime Unit, where he helped to build up new operational partnerships with international allies and with business. Since leaving government in he has provided specialist cyber and other security advice to government and to businesses in the financial, technology, and manufacturing sectors.

Charles Godfray

Professor Sir Charles Godfray
Director, Oxford Martin School

Professor Godfray is a population biologist with broad interests in the environmental sciences and has published in fundamental and applied areas of ecology, evolution and epidemiology. He is interested in how the global food system will need to change and adapt to the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, and in particular in the concept of sustainable intensification, and the relationship between food production, ecosystem services and biodiversity. In 2017 he was knighted for services to scientific research and for scientific advice to government.

As well as leading the School, Professor Godfray is also a lead researcher of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food and the Oxford Martin Restatements project, a new approach to providing succinct summaries of scientific evidence around highly contentious topics.