Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham, Founders Chair Professor of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) and a leading cyber security expert, recently participated in a high profile panel on Cyber Risk and Resilience at Lloyds of London Insurance, the oldest insurance company in the world, founded in 1688. Featured speakers at the Lloyds event included Lord Mark Sedwill (also known as Baron Sedwill of Sherborne), Sir Ciarán Devane, Chair of Irish Health Service Executive, and the well-known Cambridge University Cyber Security Professor Ross Anderson.

A key Cyber Resilience challenge that was addressed involved the assurance that systems and applications continue to function in the midst of cyber-attacks. This is a monumental task, with the goal being to identify attacks quickly and isolate them so that the rest of the system and applications are not attacked. Thuraisingham, with her UT Dallas colleagues Profs. Latifur Khan and Murat Kantarcioglu have focused on applying deep learning techniques and utilizing scalable infrastructures such as the cloud to identify advanced persistent threats rapidly. Another major challenge that the cyber security community is addressing is handling attacks on machine learning techniques. Together with the team at UT Dallas, Thuraisingham has developed various types of adversarial machine learning techniques to handle such attacks. She has also proposed utilizing formal methods for verifying the machine learning software. Other topics she discussed at the panel include handling ransomware attacks and the ability for quantum computing to break encryption codes in milliseconds. She goes on to point out that this can potentially impact security if successful postquantum cryptographic techniques are not developed.

In addition to developing technology to address these challenges, Thuraisingham also stressed the need for generally analyzing risks and ensuring proper cyber governance. She advocated developing solutions appropriate for the risks involved. Consequently, the analysis of risks and development of technological solutions to address the problems is crucial. This also necessarily involves proper cyber governance. The organization must have 100% commitment to cyber security and there must be a cyber security expert at the executive level as well as in the boardroom. Thuraisingham argued that this is the only way an organization can understand the challenges involved and ensure that adequate resources are provided to secure all aspects of the systems and applications. Cyber insurance is also an area that is gaining prominence because of the increase in the number of attacks. Just like health insurance and car insurance for individuals, organizations should purchase appropriate cyber insurance tailored to the risks involved.