Next Steps
There are few tools that have as much potential for good and ill as the internet. It can be a catalyst for economic growth and social change, but can also wreak havoc on financial and commercial networks, undermine democratic processes, and stifle dissent.
Efforts to identify, understand, and address the risks that arise from our reliance on the internet are insufficient and often reactive rather than proactive. Attempts to manage cybersecurity are constrained by outdated organizational and institutional frameworks, outpaced by new technologies used by malicious actors, and subject to the significant challenge of collaborating across public and private sectors.
Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and other new technologies continue to create ways to both implement cyberattacks and to defend against them. We are not doing enough to mitigate the former and to take advantage of the latter.
On September 25, 2018, Columbia World Projects (CWP) held a Forum with about 35 experts from inside and outside Columbia University. The meeting was designed to deepen understanding of complex cybersecurity challenges and identify promising projects that CWP could implement to reduce the threats and vulnerabilities posed by the internet without undermining its capacity for good. Before the meeting, experts worked with CWP staff to develop more than a dozen project proposals, which we discussed and evaluated during the Forum.
Read more about the project proposals and the working group discussions in our Forum report.