One of English translations of Victor Hugo’s words On résiste à l’invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l’invasion des idées reads as No army can stop an idea whose time has come. In our case, the army is even going to help promote such an idea instead of resisting it.
Atlantic Council is set to host a discussion that was long awaited by me and a solid crowd of experts in information security, business continuity and cyber risk management. The Cyber Risk Wednesday: Software Liability discussion will take place on November the 30th in Washington, DC.
The discussion will be dedicated to a difficult question of increasing liability of software vendors for defects in their products, and the ways of trading it off with economic factors. Taking into account the extent to which software, in a variety of forms, infiltrates into the inmost aspects of our lives (such as a smart house running a hot tub for you), as well as the extent to which we trust software in managing our lives for us (letting it run driverless cars and smart traffic systems), the question of liability is vital – primarily, as a trigger for vendors for employing proper quality assurance and quality control processes. That’s why I wholly welcome the Atlantic Council’s initiative, and truly hope that it will help raise awareness of the problem and give a push to wide public discussion of the same.