- Hi.
Martin Rust with the Security and Policy Institute for Professional Development,
here, at the University of Ottawa.
My guest today is Cheri McGuire, the vice president of
Global Public Policy for the Symantec Corporation.
We’re talking about cybersecurity and the impact on individuals, and citizens,
and corporations, and large corporations and small corporations, but we’re also talking
about the government.
And I think citizens look to the government today to protect them, and
provide a level of protection security for their information.
What is the role of government in this whole cybersecurity debate, and
is there a role?
- Well, absolutely, there is a role for government and, certainly from an industry
standpoint, our view is that none of us can do this alone.
Industry can do many things, government can do many things and the individual
citizen … So, there really is this shared responsibility and there is no silver
bullet whether it be regulation, or technology, or process that’s going to actually solve
this issue.
And so, we all have to work collectively to address it.
- What types of things our policy makers should be considering as they go forward and
look at developing policy for Canada in a variety of different areas?
- Sure.
So, there are a couple areas.
One is certainly on the information sharing front.
Industry clearly sees a lot of interesting threat data and that is something that helps
everyone protect themselves more effectively.
Government sees the same thing and so, our ability to actually share that information
with each other —in an anonymized way of course, we need to ensure that we are protecting
privacy while we’re doing that, and proprietary information— but sharing that
information so that we have a common picture of what the threat landscape is can actually
help all of us protect ourselves more effectively.
- The question about regulation comes to mind.
Do we need more regulation in this area or less, or a different kind of regulation?
I mean, governments often participate by providing standards and levels of guidance
around how information can be kept.
What’s your view on regulation versus not?
- Well, our view on regulation is that there are times that it can be useful, but we also
need to be very thoughtful when we’re proceeding into that area.
Policy often follows innovation, meaning that it lags behind the
pace of innovation.
And so, we often want … we say we want to be careful before we regulate
too soon or put standards in place too soon, before a particular industry or innovation
has actually reached a level of maturity.
One of those areas, obviously, that’s getting a lot of discussion, here in Canada, is on
data breach regulation.
And we’ve been a long time advocate for national data breach
standards because one, it helps level the playing field for all organizations.
Two, it gives our citizens a sense that they will be informed
if their information is somehow leaked or breached.
And three, it also helps raise the awareness and drives security adoption and
implementation across organizations.
So, we don’t necessarily think that all regulation is
good or all regulation is bad.
It just needs to be done in a thoughtful way.
- And specifically on the topic of privacy, I know that my kids’ generation, for instance,
don’t look at privacy the same way that I would look at privacy.
How do you see government adapting and evolving to that?
- Yeah.
This is a particular challenge today, the question of privacy versus security.
And we, at Symantec, our view is that we need
to try to find the right balance between privacy and security.
And that’s not often easy in today’s world, with the different types
of threats that we see.
But it is something that we really do need to try to do, because you
can’t have privacy without security.
- Right.
And part of the challenge, of course, is making people at least aware that they
need more security and not being quite so freely open and sharing the information that
they have.
- That’s right.
This general level of awareness around putting too much information about
yourself out there is something that I think will go a long way in helping many of our
up and coming generations recognize that they
need to have a role to play in their security as
well.
- Absolutely.
Thank you, Cheri.
I’m Martin Rust with the Security and Policy Institute
for Professional Development, here, at the University of Ottawa.
My guest today has been Cheri McGuire, the vice president of
Global Public Policy for the Symantec Corporation.