Before a packed room of leading government officials, technologists, and journalists in downtown Washington this morning, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano stressed the need for a new public-private partnership framework that enables innovation and workforce development in cybersecurity in order to adequately protect our nation’s interests from cyber attacks. The event — Cybersecurity Breakfast: Protecting Our Nation’s Assets — was sponsored in part by Washington Post Live, the live journalism arm of The Washington Post Co., and held at the newspaper company’s headquarters. Napolitano described the cybersecurity challenge in her opening remarks: The risks to national and economic security from cyberspace affect us all. So we begin by saying that […]

Sometime on Halloween — yes, Halloween — the world’s population is projected to hit 7 billion. In anticipation of the numerical milestone, msnbc.com has published an article this week calling on leading experts in many different disciplines to weigh in on the challenges caused by the burgeoning world population, noting: How we respond now will determine whether we have a healthy, sustainable and prosperous future or one that is marked by inequalities, environmental decline and economic setbacks… Among the experts consulted is Google’s Vice President for Research and Special Initiatives Alfred Spector, who noted access to information and education as one of the problems facing society: In the developed world technology has transformed […]