‘Who do you trust?’

Quite a while ago there was a television game show hosted by the late Johnny Carson called “Who do you trust?”
The players were nearly always a man and a woman chosen for their unique backgrounds. Carson would interview the contestants, getting to know them. In the quiz portion, Carson would tell the male contestant the category of the upcoming question; the man would then have to decide whether to answer the question himself or "trust" the woman to do so. Three questions were played per couple, and three couples competed on each show. The show worked off the principal of trust.
Trust and information sharing was the big theme today during today’s keynote address at the Process Control Systems Industry Conference in San Diego.
“It’s beyond viruses and worms,” said Phyllis Schneck, PhD, vice president of research integration at Secure Computing Corp. and chairman emeritus, board of directors of the 26,000-member InfraGard National Members Alliance. “It is how do we take our understanding of the cyber infrastructure; people that know that and how do we share that with each other having to worry about competition, intellectual property?”
InfraGard is an information sharing and analysis effort combining the knowledge base of a wide range of members. At its most basic level, InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector. InfraGard is an association of businesses, academic institutions, state and local law enforcement agencies, and other participants dedicated to sharing information and intelligence to prevent hostile acts against the United States. InfraGard chapters link with FBI Field Office territories.
“There is a lot of data in your organization a lot of things your see that your colleagues can be very helpful and the government can help if there are ways to share that information,” Schneck said.
She built 86 separate communities across the country enlisting private sector organizations that have relationships with more than just the FBI. They would have relationships with Department of Homeland Security, local police, essentially any law enforcement agency in that area.
“We built a core of trust,” Schneck said. “It’s not bout who you know, but it’s who you actually want to talk to and who you trust. It’s about building a circle of trust.”
One of the problems everyone faces when it comes to cyber attacks is “the bad guys have actually mastered it better than we have. How do you find the right people to get the information to?”
"The government has a role, the private sector has a role, we are not doing a good enough job in getting the data out there. We have to do a better job in building that circle of trust.”