Contact:
Chriss Swaney
Carnegie Mellon
412-268-5776

Thom Little
State Legislative Leaders Foundation
336-856-0623

For immediate release:
June 2, 2005

Carnegie Mellon CyLab Partners with Leaders Foundation to Host Former Presidential Cybersecurity Advisor

PITTSBURGH—Richard Clarke, the former special advisor to the president for cybersecurity, will speak about protecting the information highway at a luncheon seminar sponsored by the State Legislative Leaders Foundation, the Information Networking Institute and Carnegie Mellon CyLab.

Clarke, who is scheduled to speak at 1 p.m. June 3 in the Singleton Room of Roberts Hall at Carnegie Mellon University, will discuss how legislators and business officials should think globally and act locally when it comes to cybersecurity.

More than 60 business and legislative leaders from around the country will spend two days in Pittsburgh learning about the latest cybersecurity research under way at Carnegie Mellon and around the country. In addition to Clarke, the participants will hear from Andy Purdy of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Ken Watson of the National Cyber Security Alliance, Nathanial Wood of the Federal Trade Commission and Paul Kurtz of the National Cyber Security Alliance.

Event organizers say the seminars fall on the heels of a recent decision by the Bush administration to develop new cybersecurity strategies meant to recognize the transformation of al-Qaida over the past three years into a more amorphous, diffuse and difficult-to-target organization that struck the United States in 2001.

Carnegie Mellon CyLab researchers will discuss a broad swath of cybersecurity research, including new technology to secure cyberspace and the development of a new game called MySecureCyberspace. The new cyberportal was created in response to the President's National Strategy to Secure cyberspace, which calls for each citizen to secure a slice of their own corner of cyberspace.

Carnegie Mellon CyLab is a university-wide, multidisciplinary initiative that builds on more than two decades of Carnegie Mellon's leadership in information technology. Carnegie Mellon CyLab also offers professional master's degree programs in networking and security through the Information Networking Institute, the education arm of CyLab.

The State Legislative Leaders Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to educating business and legislative leaders about pressing issues and current events.