Cyber Attacks on Governments

Advances continue to be made in numerous areas of research, including those related to network and online security. I believe that such advances will provide user benefits in the near future. I think we have reached a point where enough momentum exists that we can develop the "culture of security" I mentioned earlier. This, in combination with the focus being paid by the Obama administration to this issue, will result in such advances being put into use. As a result, the deployment of safe and faster technologies will actually stand a chance of being successfully adopted and deployed.

A significant focus of the Internet2 community is in the area of authentication (read this for more information and technical background). As you can see in my response below related to financial transactions, I believe authentication continues to be one of the most important technology areas in terms of providing significant benefits across the board for all stakeholders. Many of the problems that exist today are due to communications or connections with unknown entities. If you receive an email saying "click on this important document that I just sent you" and it appears to be from a friend, do you actually know that your friend sent it? This relates to the issue of human authentication. More subtlety (but perhaps even more importantly), does your computer know that it is talking to the right computer at the other end for a particular communication or could it be an imposter computer? This relates to the issue of device authentication. Advances in both areas will offer significant benefits.

Advancements that occur in the academic and government areas eventually benefit the general public as the solutions they find become part of what is commercially available.