It seems we can’t go more than a few days without hearing of another hacking issue taking place. Whether it is the nude pictures of celebrities being stolen and shared, or millions of people’s personal information being taken from major corporations, this is clearly a huge problem that needs to be addressed. To attempt to push the conversation (and action) forward on this, President Obama has called together a summit to discuss the issue openly and directly.
This summit will be held on Friday, January 13th at Stanford University. In attendance will be federal government leaders, CEOs from a variety of industries, computer security experts and high ranking officials from financial and retail services.
One of the key speakers at the summit is the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook. While he is clearly a leader in the IT world, many people do think that this is an odd choice for a security focused summit. After all, Apple’s iCloud was recently hacked, which caused the nude pictures of many popular celebrities to be leaked onto the internet.
In addition, Apple has been criticized by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies over the past year about their unwillingness to allow law enforcement to access customer iPhone data.
The summit will be closed to the general public, but is expected to be important in guiding the conversation about cyber security in the future. Of course, this topic is of key importance for all digital marketers (even if you don’t store nude pictures in the cloud). Marketers rely on consumers to be confident in doing business online, and every hack that takes place threatens that confidence.
How much we will hear about what is said in the summit is not yet known, but this is certainly a good sign that the Obama administration is taking the threat seriously, and bringing people together from the public and private sector to attempt to address the issues.
