Vic Maconachy had many messages for attendees at TU’s Graduate Lecture Series Monday night, but there was one overarching theme: information assurance is crucial, and it’s only becoming more imperative.
Maconachy, manager for the National Security Agency’s National Information Systems Security Education and Training Program, described the “new type of computing environment” that users face.
“What’s happened in America is a transformation,” Maconachy explained. “When I first started in this business…I was always told security is like selling insurance. I never felt I was ahead of the curve on that, because people can always say no to more insurance.” But now, “information assurance is really a core business requirement.”
Maconachy spoke to a full house in the Potomac Lounge Monday night. Extra chairs were brought in before the lecture began. Many students attended the event because it was required for their courses.
The talk was titled “Information security assurance in American education: Securing the edges of the Net.” He began by stating the United States is experiencing an “epidemic” of computer security-related issues.
A “growing American population” remains uninformed about the dangers of the Internet, Maconachy said.
He showed a slide of photos from Pearl Harbor and September 11, 2001 – along with an image of a computer chip.
“We need to change our thinking from steel-on-target to virus-on-[computer],” stressing future dangers and the appropriate homeland security responses, he explained.
"Dr. Vic," as he referred to himself several times, said IT professionals must begin to think about their adversaries.
“Why attack American computers?” he asked, pointing to a slide of darts sticking out of a target. Then he answered: “The U.S. holds 80 percent of the world’s intellectual property.”
He discussed the possibility, perhaps the inevitability, of cyber-terror attacks.
“The attacks that you are going to see are not going to be symmetric. They are going to be asymmetric. The courses that you are in are going to have to change,” he said, addressing the students and faculty in attendance.
Information assurance concepts should be implemented across the curriculum at universities, he added. He cited health sciences, education, business and law as some of the fields that must be aware of the issues.
“Information assurance is not just a technology issue,” Maconachy said, joking that the notion was heresy. “It’s a management issue. It’s about responsibility. It’s about your generation moving into those positions of responsibility, and making those decisions.”
The College of Graduate Studies and Research sponsored the event with the College of Science and Mathematics.
“We invite notable speakers to speak on a variety of topics,” CGSR Dean Jin Gong said in his introduction.
The graduate program sponsors a lecture with one of the other colleges on campus each semester. Associate Dean Larry Shirley helped organize the event.
“Some of what he had to say was kind of scary,” Shirley said. “But it’s good to know that Towson is helping to solve the problems by producing students who have that kind of knowledge in information assurance.”
Towson is one of 59 Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education.
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