Seems that "Chicken Little" wasn't crazy after all. Just a little ahead of his time.
When it comes to homeland defense, "Chicken Little" is Winn Schwartau, author of the eerily prophetic book, Information Warfare and founder of the intense 15 year running InfowarCon security conference (www.infowarcon.com.) Since 1991 when he testified in front of congress, Schwartau has been sounding alarm bells to the U.S. homeland and critical infrastructure space about the potential for an electronic pearl harbor, a term he coined.
Turns out he was more like Nostradamus.
There's no better illustration of Schwartau's vindication than the Opening Keynote address at this years GFirst Security Conference (www.us-cert.gov/GFIRST). On Tuesday June 26th Schwartau will share the stage with both Greg Garcia (U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Assistant Secretary of Cybersecurity and Communication) and Kevin J. O'Conner (Chief of Staff to the United States Attorney General.) They will jointly address the crowd of nearly 1,000 government cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection specialists.
Instead of savoring his well earned vindication, Schwartau is still stirring the pot. "Despite 17 years of often futile overly technical and complex attempts at solving the nations Critical Infrastructure issues, our leaders have totally missed the point." Schwartau's widely anticipated keynote is going to layout his vision for protecting the homeland. His vision will focus on the three action items that this country needs to address to protect its electronic borders.
While likely on his best behavior at GFirst, Schwartau promises his "unplugged" politically incorrect best at this years Infowarcon (September 21-23 in Bethesda, MD). "One thing we have learned in the last 17 years is that we didn't listen to our own advice. The bad guys did. For 3 days I'm bringing in the top experts from around the world to teach among other things how to be a cyber-terrorist, so we can beat them at their own game." InfowarCon Advisory Board: Dr. Dan Kuehl, National Defense University; Amit Yoran, NetWitness; Howard A. Schmidt, Former White House Cybersecurity Advisor; Mark Rasch, FTI; Dorothy Denning, DoD; Freeman Mendell, InfraGuard; Richard Forno, Infowarrior.org; Lars Nicander, CATS; InfowarCon Partners Include: Purifile, Tec Sec, Homeland Defense Journal, Government Security News, Homeland Defense Week, Officer.com, Continuity Insights, Infraguard, ISSA NOVA, Terrorism Research Center and National Defense University.
