I look forward to continuing to work with you, on behalf of the president and Vice President , continue to get the job done. God bless you all. They maxed even benjamin. Stephen benjamin. [ applause ] cyber officials from the Biden Administration join members of congress and industry stakeholders to discuss ongoing priorities. This is part of the Technology Summit this is an washington, d. C. [ music ] lisa welcome to the please welcome to the stage , the idi board member and Vice President of global Government Relationships at meta. Hello everyone, that was a very good applause, are you asleep after lunch . Come on [ applause ] welcome everyone, it is great to have you here. It is my honor to welcome you to the second annual, intersect Technology Summit. I run global Government Relations for Volodymyr Zelenskyy one. I am proud to serve on the idi board of directors. This is a great crowd that we have here today. I dont think everyone is all in from lunch. Everybody is chitchatting, and that is okay. We have a lot of people online, over 1000 people registered to participate in this, which is awesome. That is testament to all that is currently happening on technology policy. It is not a surprise that there is such interest. In our world of technology, there is never a dull moment. There is no exception to that, right now. Technology continues to evolve, as it always does. This year has been a landmark year for innovation. Regenerative ai exploding onto the scene, and grabbing everyones attention, much to savard dismay. And i hear at lunch, 10 congressional bills each year for the next 10 years . That is a lot. Somehow, seems at this time we are at an important inflection point. Many issues that we are working on may truly determine the course of our future. Therefore, it is fitting that we have taken advantage of the opportunity presented by todays conference to bring together smart minds from all different backgrounds, professions, and opinions to tackle these topics head on. Today, we will be taking stock of the Major Technology policy milestones that have transpired over the past year. We will discuss the biden ai executive order, known to many of us as the gift that never stops giving. With the people setting the vision for ai in the u. S. Federal government. We will get an update on how the c. H. I. P. S. And science act is impacting mainstream america. Cyber security and ai stand at the forefront of todays digital landscape. Around the world, the current date of Cyber Security reflects an ever growing need for robust measures to safeguard our digital infrastructure. With Cyber Threats and increasingly sophisticated attacks continuing to liberate, including the use of ai, the imperative collaboration between the public and private sector has never been more apparent. That is why, somebody that has been in the Cyber Security world for many years, i will not admit how many from this large audience, i am thrilled that we will hear from just one, but two of the worlds foremost Cyber Security leaders this afternoon. I had the pleasure to meet one of them backstage a few moments ago, harry coker will take the stage momentarily. We have worked with many trade associations. This event, and this organization really do stand apart. Iti is comprehensive on technology policy, covering the full waterfront of policy issues. It is truly global. We look at the 79 member companies. These member companies, many of whom are with us today in the room. It is great to see all of you here, welcome. It is a whos who of Top Technology talent from across the world. We are glad to have everyone together in one place. I also want to give a special welcome to our virtual audience, joining us online. To our friends in europe, asia, australia, south america, or anywhere else, we are glad you are here with us today as well. Of course, this event would not have been possible without the generous support of our sponsors and ita member companies. Let me give a special thanks to amazon, cisco systems, cognizant, erickson, mastercard, meta , nielsen, qualcomm, sage, salesforce for their sponsorship of todays program. I will now ask you to silence your phones, turn off your ringers, but dont put them away. We will invite you to share the intersect experience with your audiences. Tweet, post, and engage in social media however you like as we move through todays programming. Youll find us on twitter and at the intersect 2024. Go ahead and post away, all day long, please. We will be doing Digital Pulse throughout the program. You will need your phones to participate with those. We have instructions showing up as we go. You can go to the pigeonhole web address and enter your code to join. Submissions will be anonymous. We appreciate your participation. Lets get the ball rolling. It is my pleasure to welcome jason to the stage. He is the president ceo of iti, our fearless leader, will be introducing our keynote speaker. Jason . [ applause ] thank you for getting us kicked off. Hello everybody, it is so great to see you. I cannot see any of you if the light were not shutting my face, it would be great to see you. We do appreciate your taking time out to be with us today. It is an exciting day. We have an amazing lineup. We have had some terrific, great figures. We have even more to come. On behalf of the entire iti team, thank you for being here with us today. It is my great honor to welcome our opening keynote speaker, that will start the intersect off for us. National cyber director, harry coker. He is a graduate of the u. S. Naval academy, the Naval Postgraduate School on the Georgetown University law center. The director has received numerous accolades from across his many years of service to our nation such as the National Intelligence distinguished Service Medal for exceptional service. He has served as the executive director of the nsa. He also played a strategic role, across the intelligence community, including extensive experience at the cia as well. He is marked by leadership in Digital Innovation, science, technology, and public affairs. It showcases his commitment to excellence. I can say that our nation is very lucky that he has decided to return to service as the National Cyber director. This is his first speech in washington since being confirmed to the role. I do ask you all to please join me in welcoming to the intersect stage, National Cyber director, harry coker. [ applause ] good afternoon. I am delighted to be here. Thank you, jason for the gracious introduction. It made me wonder who he was talking about, but i will take it. I am excited to join you all this afternoon to kick off this event. Your probably spreads with a cane and the shoes, i had a procedure not long ago, had my left knee replaced two weeks ago. I may not be able to kick this off in the fashion that i would like to, i still cannot get into my dress shoes. I hope you will forgive me for wearing air jordans. I heard i needed to kick this thing off. Ill take the power of any athlete, especially the goat to get it done. In all seriousness, i am honored to stand before you as a nations second National Cyber director. I am particularly pleased to be here at the intersect summit. You all have been great collaborators. We are grateful to an organization like iti for helping to create opportunities for engagement that drive meaningful change. At the office of the National Cyber director, we like to say, engage early and often. I am here early in my tenure. You can ask to see me back on a regular basis. If jason will have me, anyway. I have been in this job for seven weeks. I have to tell you, i was humbled and quite excited to be called back to serve. I dont know that any other position could have brought me out of my second retirement. This one, due to the potential to make a Lasting Impact to our nation was an easy decision for me. After 43 years in the navy and the intelligence community, truly is a privilege to help a new and Critical Office contribute to the safety and prosperity of the American People. One thing you should know about me, i love to solve hard problems. That was a driving factor in my decision to return to government service. And to quote the goat, michael jordan, obstacles dont have to stop you. If you run into a wall, dont turn around and give up, figure out how to climate go through it, or work around it. Hard problems really do energize me. I grew up as a cold war sealer in the navy, when our nation faced the hard problem of the soviet union. As a part of the intelligence community, i was extremely proud to take on what we refer to as the great power competition. Part of my contribution to those efforts included incorporating opensource enterprise into the agencys director of Digital Innovation and integrating into the [ indiscernible ] centers. All of those challenges were hard Cyber Security is a different kind of a hard problem. It stems from the threat that is very real and persistent. One example . Amongst many, is a threat from the peoples republic of china. Last week, i had the honor of testifying in front of the house select committee, focused on the Chinese Communist party, with my colleagues from across the federal government. I worked with the fbi director, and my former boss that recently retired, the u. S. Cyber command and the director of the nsa. It wasnt an important moment for us to appear together to articulate the full measure of the threat posed by china, and to demonstrate coherence and collaboration across our federal enterprise. Cyber actors from the peoples republic of china are actively working to gain access into our nations critical infrastructures sums, with the purpose of disruption, or worse, destruction. In the early stages of armed conflict, they want to disrupt our militarys ability to mobilize and impact the systems that allow us to thrive in our increasingly digital world. Your intention is to drive home a point that so many of us have known for years, in cyberspace, the private sector, and the American People themselves are on the front lines. As we all know, the vast majority of the critical and the structure is owned and operated by the private sector. Folks, protecting and defending america from the growing number of hybrid threats is a hard problem. Ensuring the short and long term protection, defense, and resilience of the systems that underpin our increasingly digital way of life is a hard problem. Ensuring that the internet remains open, free, global, and operable, reliable, and secure, anchored and universal values that respects human rights and fundamental freedoms is a hard problem. Harder still is what we do about it. After all, states have fostered military forces aggressively for a millennia. America has had plenty of success responding to hostile actions outside of the domain of cyberspace. As we said last week, the risk we face within the cyberspace today is unacceptable. There are plenty of actions that we have, can, will take to address counter normative behavior. And the necessity to partner with so many of you in this room is absolutely essential. How do we, collectively, seize the initiative from our adversaries . How do we take the talent at your organizations and channel our collective energy toward countering the growing number of malicious actors . How do we collectively leverage the amazing technologies that you will create, which improve the way we work, live, and play , and ensure they are a source of strength, and not vulnerability . Not just a vulnerability to your companies or the federal government, how we truly help local government, or the schools and hospitals struggling to protect themselves. We have one of the 50,000 Water Systems spread across our great nation. The president started us out on the right foot. Present vitamin Cyber Security a priority. You brought in outstanding people. Some of them will be with you here today. My dear friend, the Deputy NationalSecurity Council will join you all later this afternoon, they have made incredible progress. They are driving the development of executive orders to pushing for the creation of the cyber trust smart. I would be remiss if i did not mention my white house colleague, major Steve Benjamin of Columbia South carolina, and the director of public engagement. You will see him this afternoon. His outreach on behalf of the administration is key to strengthening our partnerships and delivering out comes. At oh ncb, we are lucky to have had chris english set the organization on the right course. True champions of this office and the mission. I am proud and lucky to build upon the foundation that those two leaders gave us. We are standing on the shoulders and the wisdom of congress, that established the office of National Cyber director in 2021, following a recommendation by the cyber base solarium commission. I was pleased to meet with many of those commissioners last week. I could tell you, their insight continues to be a great value to me, and frankly to all of us. Leaders know that you cannot tackle hard problems without good people. It also takes a good plan and some good oldfashioned grit. I am hopeful that this group, has heard quite a bit about the national Cyber Security strategy, and that two fold shift that it calls for. Number one, shifting the responsibility away from individuals and Small Businesses , and on to the larger institutions, capable of bearing more responsibility in cyberspace. Number two, realigning incentives to savor longterm investments and Cyber Security. That has been said before, and i do agree with it, allow me to share my take on this important strategy. It is bold due to the underlying vision and the tenacity of the work that the office sets out, specifically, the hard problems that we have to solve. The strategy says, we have to take problems, like the fact that the internet was a build on insecure foundations. We are finally in fomenting improvements through the border gateway protocol. The strategy says that we need to hold Software Manufacturers accountable when they rush insecure code to market. They are working with the Academic Community and legal experts to ask for different liability regimes. We will soon be engaging with you to hear the private sector perspective. The strategy says that smart regulations minimize the compliance burden on companies. We are working with partners across the interagency to harmonize requirements when using the feedback that many of you have already provided us in response to our request for information. The strategy says that we need to develop a diverse and robust National Cyber workforce to meet the challenge of this decade. We are working aggressively to build and foster ecosystems in communities across the nation to fill the more than half 1 million cyber Jobs Available today. To that end, i have been to a job fair at the Community College of baltimore county. I am thrilled to have heard from an incredible array of students, faculty, and employers. It was great to see. We made crop progress. We had some of lawyers that had not visited that institution before. They came away impressed. We will do Summer Events across the country, showing people the opportunities. Every one of the problems that i mentioned are hard in their own right. Each of the ones i mentioned has been studied for decades. Each remains pernicious and unresolved. What makes the strategy bold is its clarity. That the heart problems, these loans being too complicated, are cicely what we need to tackle in order to cease the initiative from the adversary that would do our nation harm. We have a clear commitment to transparency in the accountability by publishing the national Cyber Security implementation plan. As a former program manager, i found it impressive. I have come to watch the team put their shoulder to the wheel every day, with our counterparts across the interagency. Trust is built on openness. We commit to you that when we do report on our progress, you will hear about, not just where we succeeded, but where we came up short, with the intent of getting better. In the coming months, you will see, the report on the efforts to date, and the next phase of the strategy implementation. I will say one additional thing about the strategies implementation band. Policy solutions are not self executed. It is true that developing solutions to the heart problems in cyberspace is the fundamental responsibility of our office. So is carrying them to fruition. Thankfully, i am not alone. There are 80, incredible patriots, that i get to work with everyday. These are x percent heal from industries and civil societies, and capitol hill. Their work includes putting good ideas, the powerful solutions into practice to improve the digital foundations of this nation, and to make our nation safer. I am excited about the work that the talented staff is leading on the open research album of software measurability. It makes it difficult to understand the quality of code that we use. That work is a continuation of a paper from 2016. We are pushing government and private sector coders to ensure security by design incurs memory safely which is peer some of the most dangerous vulnerabilities that criminals look to exploit our memory safety bugs and memory safe coding would just prevent those errors from ever making it into production. And yet, developers have been slow to adopt them, even though many have a vested for years. In the coming weeks, you will see us put out a paper that addresses both memory safety and software measurability. Additionally, we are developing guidance to help agencies to eliminate the unnecessary degree of requirements for Cyber Security positions. While this has been mandated for years, it is another tough challenge that has yet to be fully implemented. In many cases, turns out implementing the solution is the hardest part of all. That will take partnership. That is about rebalancing, responsibility, and cyberspace to the most credible actors. That means a government, and all the organizations and representatives in the room today, and all of you. It will take a committed partnership to ensure the cloud improves Cyber Security, not become a source of heightened, systemic, concentrated risk. It will take meaningful partnerships to stop adversaries from using our own systems, whether the virtual private sector, as the home or Office Routers to launch their attacks. It will take sustained partnerships to bring coherence to the federal missions and coordinations to unwind the sea licenses the agencies deal with on a daily basis. It will take innovative ownerships and your technological knowhow to Scale Solutions that protect pipelines delivering gas to come to minneapolis, or the hospital providing lifesaving care in my hometown. It will not be easy. That is why the national Cyber Security strategy was our north star. I appreciate that this can trace its lineage back 25 years. That tells me that cyber was, and remains a bipartisan issue. That tells me that the public and private partnership was and remains core to our success. It also tells me, after a quarter of a century, we are still dealing with the same tough problems. The office of the National Cyber director was billed for this challenge. We have the team and the vision , and we have the responsibility to make sure that we are not scratching our heads at the same hard problems in 2050. It is time to get it done. I say again, please continue to collaborate with us in a true partnership. That means tell us the truth, even when we dont want to hear it. Let us know what is working on what is not. Keep giving your feedback and your ideas. Join us in solving the hard problems for the sake of our nation for prosperity. Thank you. [ applause ] joining us now j, president and ceo of iti