Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend and participate in the Washington Post Cybersecurity Summit. The purpose of the event was to discuss what the government’s role should be in assisting the private sector when responding to a crippling attack over the network, presumably from a nation state actor.

Photo credit: Dr. Costis Toregas [posted to Twitter]

The other participants were several well known and established voices on the national stage for this discussion. The top of this list being Janet Napolitano, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The event started with remarks and an interview with Secretary Napolitano. This was followed by a panel that role played how the FBI, Intelligence Community, Department of Homeland Security, and State Department would work with a victimized U.S. company under active attack by a nation state actor. Interestingly, the exercise focused on a sabotage scenario, not theft of information.

A short panel followed discussing policy implications of the role-playing exercise.

Finally, I participated on the last panel: Looking Forward with the CIO of NASA and Steven Bucci from the Heritage Foundation. This final panel contained the view points of an executive with a big job, a strategic thinker, and a hacking geek. Mary, the event moderator, did an excellent job steering the discussion into territory that overlapped our points of view.

If you’d like to see video from the event, head over to C-SPAN2. All segments are there. The Washington Post also Lived Blogged the event.