As you the reader have no doubt deduced, I’m in New Zealand, or birdland, as I like to think of it, due to all the birds that filled niches here that mammals occupy most other places.

My purpose for being here was to fill a niche as someone who could talk about Internet security worldwide at a conference on Science and Security: Informing New Zealand, organized by the Royal Society of New Zealand. I did that, and as the last speaker of the day, I was struck by how many other talks, from geography to social science to amelioration of landslide and flooding risks at popular tourist sites mentioned the same themes, which included:

• Ongoing, comprehensive data gathering
• Information production by crossing data with purposes of its users
• Multiple sources of data
• Sources of data about different layers of infrastructure
• Centralized yet redundant respository
• Data mining for hazards and events
• Holistic interpretation
• Continuing dialog with users and producers of data and of the underlying infrastructures
• Neither government nor private industry can go it alone
• Avoiding risk is not managing risk
• Technology alone won’t solve anything: results must be conveyed and affected parties must be pursuaded to act
• Summary: networks is politics

The first talk, which was about geography, mentioned many of these points. There are, of course, some differences with Internet security and risk management. Continue reading →