Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast, Episode #93: An Interview with Rod Beckstrom

Our guest for episode 93 is cybersecurity’s Renaissance Man. Rod Beckstrom started DHS’s National Cybersecurity Center, then headed ICANN; before and after those gigs, he was a Silicon Valley investor and officer in security startups as early as the 1990s and as recently as this year. Our interview spans Rod’s career and what it has taught him about security, privacy, law, and government.

In the news roundup, Alan Cohn and Jason Weinstein talk about proposals to require social media sites to do more about online terrorist activity. Alan and I take a dive into the EU’s achingly slow progress toward new cybersecurity rules for critical infrastructure – and how those rules will affect US companies.

Michael Vatis tells us that Michael Daugherty of LabMD is officially the only challenge facing the FTC as it sets (or at least enforces) cybersecurity requirements for American business. That’s because Wyndham Hotels has officially given up the ghost, agreeing to twenty years of privacy and security monitoring by the FTC.

Finally, Michael Vatis and I agree that encryption has become the Donald Trump of tech issues – but each of us for different reasons.

The podcast will be on hiatus over the holidays, but we won’t completely abandon you. While I was at a BlackHat Executive conference last week, I had a chance to do a short interview of Mike Daugherty about his LabMD experience, and we’ll be releasing that as a special bonus edition of the podcast over the Christmas break. (We’re holding it because I’ve offered the FTC a chance for equal time.  But we’ll be releasing the interview next week in any event, with or without the FTC’s input.)

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