Chief executives frequently vie with one another for the spotlight when delivering key speeches at major conferences. But the most-talked-about address of the day, given to a packed auditorium at the International Cyber Expo in London’s Olympia showground, forbade any recording or photographing of his talk. He also insisted he be referred to only as “Paul F”.
“Paul F”’s bashfulness became understandable when he explained that the UK’s National Protective Security Authority (NPSA), where he is head of physical security, is now part of Britain’s secret intelligence service MI5. His talk neatly summed up the central theme of the show by providing evidence that the difference between cybercrime and physical crime has become blurred to the point of invisibility. He asked the very relevant question of whether a small drone spying into a City office using a telescopic lens and an 8k camera to read the staff’s log-in details through the window is a physical or a cyber-crime.
A century ago, in the 1920’s, telephones transformed criminal’s modus operandi as much as the internet did a hundred years later. Stake-outs of targets could be reported in real time down the telephone wires, fraudulent telephone calls could be made by con men and specialist criminals could be brought together from all over the country and all over the world at a moment’s notice. Criminals continue to use phones, yet no-one now speak of “telephone-crime” as they do of “cyber-crime”.
Bullet-proof smart cars vie with drone defense systems
This theme of merging physical and cybersecurity is present all over the show floor. Bullet-proof smart cars for politicians and dodgy “businessmen” vie for attention with smart body armour for security staff, drone defense systems, smart moving bollards and a plethora of other hybrid offerings. Twenty-First Century body scanners now in production were being predicted to replace the metal-detecting cones currently in use in all the world’s airports.
There are, of course, many non-metallic devices such as USB sticks or their cybercrime big brother, the Bash Bunny, billed by its suppliers Hak5 as being “truly the world’s most advanced USB attack platform,” that can be smuggled into a building without triggering the standard metallic body scanner. The type of security scanner now being recommended for building environments, rather than airports, sees right through the clothing to the naked body beneath, revealing objects hidden close to the subject’s body, which is displayed on the screen in great anatomical detail.
Of course, it may not yet have occurred to the largely male-driven world of cyber-physical security that their wives and girlfriends may not necessarily relish having their naked loveliness admired by the security staff wherever they go. The issue is, of course, only a tiny part of a truly massive looming debate concerning privacy and civil liberties issues raised by the growing merger of physical and cyber-security.
