Agenda
19:00 - Event start with introductions
19:10 - Speaker - Professor James Davenport
19:40 - Speaker - Dr Bob Oates
20:10 - Panel discussion, followed by Questions and answers
20:30 - Event close
Synopsis
The sixth evening of the Summer of PQC series goes under the bonnet. After a week on operational technology and critical infrastructure, the series returns to the cryptography itself: what is being replaced, what is replacing it, and how much confidence the replacements have earned.
Professor James Davenport supplies the technical grounding - the difference between the Grover and Shor threats, what the NIST standardisation process did and did not settle, the cautionary tale of SIKE, and why hybrid key establishment and hybrid signatures are the best available answer today, with crypto-agility as the durable lesson.
Dr Bob Oates builds on the previous week's discussion of operational technology to examine what this means for safety-critical systems and critical national infrastructure, where digital signatures quietly underpin far more than most operators have yet counted.
A moderated panel and audience questions and answers follow.
About the speakers
Professor James Davenport CITP Hon. FBCS has been teaching and researching mathematics and computer science at the University of Bath since 1983. Before that he worked on elliptic curves, and was the junior member of the team that broke a Federal Reserve Bank code. He has been a member of ISSG since 1987, often teaches cyber security, and was Incident Commander for the University's last major incident. He sits on national, European and international standards bodies on AI, cyber security and the interaction between the two. He also teaches, researches and writes about quantum computing - his BCS book on the subject launches on 4 August - and is the liaison from ISO/IEC JTC3 (Quantum Technologies) to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC42 (Artificial Intelligence).
Dr Bob Oates is a cyber security expert with over a decade of industrial experience, focussing predominantly on safety-critical systems, operational technologies and critical national infrastructure. He is the technical lead for Cambridge Consultants' post-quantum cryptography services. His work has included the security for the world's first commercial remotely operated ship, and at Rolls-Royce he twice won the Sir Henry Royce award. At National Grid he focused on the impact of OT/IT convergence on threat modelling. He has contributed to standards and guidance including ED-202A, the Safety Critical Systems Club's Data Safety Guidance and Canada's Cybersecurity for Road Transportation Primer. He holds an honorary Professorship in Safety and Security from De Montfort University and a PhD in Robotics and Security from the University of Nottingham.
Our events are for adults aged 16 years and over.
BCS is a membership organisation. If you enjoy this event, please consider joining BCS. You’ll be very welcome. You’ll receive access to many exclusive career development tools, an introduction to a thriving professional community and also help us Make IT Good For Society. Join BCS today
This event is brought to you by: Information Security specialist group.
