June 5, 2012

Albany cyber security conference draws 850

By: Richard A. D'Errico

Cyber attacks have risen from 3 billion in 2010 to 5.5 billion in 2011 and they are steadily increasing, said Bradley Schreiber.
 
“We’re going to have to start changing our perceptions—this is a real, tangible threat,” said Schreiber of the Applied Science Foundation for Homeland Security.
 
Schreiber is the vice president of Washington, D.C., operations and was one of the speakers at the two-day New York State Cyber Security Conference held at the Empire State Plaza.
 
The event runs through 4 p.m. today and begins at 8 a.m. Wednesday.
 
More than 850 people are attending the conference.
 
“Going forward in the cyber security space, the public and private sectors are going to need to work more closely together,” Schreiber said.
 
Rodney Dilts of AT&T’s   security office said that senior AT&T officials recently issued a challenge to his office to solve SMS spamming and SMS malicious-intent attacks.
 
SMS stands for short message service and is a form of text messaging.
 
“Within our network today we can actually fingerprint known spammers on SMS,” Dilts said. “The problem is there is no real way to deter it.”
 
One solution AT&T is looking at is alerting a user to the potential threat before the user clicks a link.
 
AT&T is rolling out its mobile security service this fall to consumers for a monthly fee. It is currently only offered to governments and business.
 
Thomas Smith, one of the organizers of the event, said the goal of the conference is to train public employees and educate the private sector about cyber threats.
 
Smith is the director of the state’s Office of Cyber Security, division of Homeland Security & Emergency Services.
 
“Having a conference of this size enables us to bring in national-level speakers from the federal government, from law enforcement and private industry to talk about what’s happening next—what’s the next threat? How are we going to meet that threat?

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