EastWest - Pretender or Contender?

It's estimated that 75 percent of cyberattacks against the United States come from outside its borders.

"Someone has to stand up and say let's take this on," Gen. Harry D. Raduege Jr., chairman of the Deloitte Center for Cyber Innovation told me following the country's first counterpunch, a worldwide cybersecurity summit. By all accounts, the summit was one of a kind. Representatives from 40 nations sat around the same table and talked solutions. Even President Obama's cyber czar, Howard Schmidt, was in attendance. But the conference, by all accounts, doesn't appear to have produced solutions.

Alan Paller, director of research at SANS (my employer), called the summit "substantially useless." In fairness, Paller didn't attend and had only talked to others about it. And as much as I appreciate Paller's candor, I tend to think there's still value in getting so many cybersecurity minds from around the world in the same room.

California's Chief Information Officer Mark Weatherford attended, and came away with a similar sentiment:

"Did a lot of great stuff come out of this? No. I would be the first to admit that," said Weatherford. "But tell me any other place where you were able to get 40 countries together with a substantial number of people that understood cybersecurity issues enough to talk about them."

Adam Ross is managing editor at the SANS Institute and wrote, edited, and Web produced for The Washington Post's opinions and politics sections, online and in print. You can reach him at aross@nextgov.com.