Sierra Commons

TECH TALK

Wednesday, Feb. 13th, 6-8pm

Applied Cryptography, with Martin Kosina

Today's computer security is based on years of complex mathematical research; however, strong ciphers themselves are not sufficient to protect information and – when applied naively -  can actually result in more damage due to misplaced expectations.  In this talk, we will explore how basic building blocks of digital cryptography are combined into digital equivalents of age-old trust mechanisms such as signatures, certificates, and secure envelopes. The oft-confused concepts of authentication vs. authorization, privacy, and non-repudiation will also be discussed. Hackers and security experts alike understand most attacks occur at this level, exploiting loose ends in general reasoning, rather than cracking ciphers with supercomputers.

Martin Kosina is a software engineer who has been working with distributed systems, industrial automation, and transaction processing for almost 20 years. His recent work at GridNet focuses on applying industry-standard encryption techniques to secure field provisioning of smart grid devices, as well as general scalability issues encountered in advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) deployments.

Attendance is by donation, public welcome.

Please RSVP here.

Tech Talks take place at Sierra Commons second Wednesday of every month, 6-8pm

This monthly series, moderated by Erika Kosina, was created to inspire the Nevada County technology community and act as a catalyst for collaboration. Informal networking takes place at 6pm, followed by lecture at 7pm (with an incentive for early arrival).

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