Cyber Roots

We must be discontent with the state of cyber security and look to cybernetics to understand how and why disinformation, social engineering and exploitation are manipulating everything from business to politics in our world so that we can prepare for the future and mitigate the never-ending risks

With all the cyber-this and cyber-that, what does it even mean? Let’s dive deep into the origin of ‘cyber’ to understand the roots of the term while looking at the early history of cybernetics. Let’s try to understand how we got here, in a world where cyber security practitioners are in a constant battle to preserve the integrity, authenticity and access to information and secure our lives and business.

We start by looking at the source [not code] of cyber by understanding cybernetics. We will dive into some of the works of Norbert Wiener, Guy Debord, Alvin Toffler and William Gibson, and even look at some of the original roots of the word ‘cyber’ in Greek and Latin. Information is the core of cybernetics, and it is moved through the dynamic feedback mediums of our world, getting processed and changed and manipulated. How do we preserve information so that it isn’t corrupted as it flows through machines, organisms, and society? If all information changes through processing, what does corruption even mean in regard to information? How do we validate that a process is even true? How do we paddle through the streams of feedback and noise of our reality with an unsinkable ship?

Not much has been done to bridge together Cybernetics and Cyber Security. We will also explore some of the contemporary authors and philosophers that tackle the cyber realm of philosophy, including the recent papers by T. Vinnakota. We will look to form some plausible analogies so that we can bridge cybernetics with cyber security for practical solutions.

The goal of this presentation is to broaden the scope of cyber security and bridge it with cybernetics in order to understand how information governs the individual and the machine. With cybernetics and cyber security merging, can we feel a bit more secure? Or can we maybe just understand that security is only an illusion that is presented to our adversary in order to make them feel insecure!

I’ve been working in cybersecurity for over 10 years. I have an interesting background, studying fine art and philosophy in college in the late 90’s. But eventually I found my home in the cyber security industry. I ran my own business for over 20 years doing development and production. In my early career I was a self taught developer, that somehow made it into the movie/TV industry in the US. I worked 7 years with SANS Institute, and have been with Black Hills Information Security for the past 5 years. I’m considered a technician and engineer by my artist peers and I am considered an artist by my technical and engineering peers. I want to share my unique perspectives with the community, to help broaden the scope of cyber security.