South Sound Technology conference

Sharon Wong

Director of Business Incubation, Emerging Technologies Group

Cisco Systems

Sharon talked to us about the Emerging Technologies Group and the Internet of everything. It was fascinating to hear her place at the company and what she sees happening. The Internet is not just about information it is about connecting things. “Today more than 99 percent of physical objects in the world are unconnected. By 2020, 50 billion devices will be connected. As the number of connections between people, processes, data, and things continue to grow” Sharon discussed the opportunities that are available for businesses to be a part of connecting everything. One of the fascinating topics that she discussed was the power company in Canada that has brought its grid online. All of its meters are IP connected and can report constantly. Cisco has been working on software that will help the company predict the amount of energy needed and capacity that it has. Another point that Sharon made was that when we connect these devices they can give us feedback on how much energy we are using. They can gives us real time information on how much money we are saving. This can help us to conserve more. 

Michael Hamilton

Chief Information and Security Officer

City of  Seattle

Michael talked to us about security and the real threats. One of his points that stuck with me was when he asked us who gets hurt when credit cards are stolen? Well not the card holder, it is the Credit Card company. But the real valuable target is the power to turn on the flood gates at a Dam 2 states away. This is what needs protecting. He also stated that antivirus is not the solution it is not going to keep them out. They are already in. We need to work on finding them and getting them out of our systems. Too much of the expertise is spent on prevention. How do we combat this? Michael is leading the way with the Public Regional Information Security Event Management (PRISEM). What this can do for us is get everyone involved. Business does not have the means to fight it. Here in the South Sound we have a lot available to us. The Military is close by at JBLM. We have the FBI who is there to help us. These are things that PRISEM can help to orchestrate. It is like a central place where threats can be managed and the right people can be notified.