Mexico City 2015 Blog: Panel on Cybersecurity and Confidence for Businesses

By
Holly K. Sonneland

How can businesses build customer confidence, while maintaining a balance between sharing information with the government and safeguarding customers’ privacy?

Speakers:

  • Andrés Rengifo, Director for Latin America of the Computer Crime Unit and Intellectual Property Issues, Microsoft (moderator)
  • Oliver González Barrales, General Director for the Specialized Center for Technological Response (CERT), Federal Police
  • Saúl Padrón Estrada, Deputy Director for Cybersecurity, Telefónica México
  • Lina Ornelas, Head of Public Policy and Government Affairs for Mexico, Central America and The Caribbean, Google

Confidence is “the cornerstone” to cybersecurity, said Google’s Lina Ornelas, much like democracy is to governance. “We’re a click away from the competition,” she said, referring to the thin red line between security and vulnerability.

Ornelas, who heads Public Policy and Government Affairs for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean for Google, spoke about the need to improve digital education for users, starting with elemental issues like password security, for which most users tend to have a low—and vulnerable—bar.

She noted that Google emphasizes educating children, who often grow up in today’s world with nearly their entire life online, about how to keep themselves secure online. Google engineers, she added, partner with Microsoft to combat the distribution of child pornography.

Next, Saúl Padrón, Telefónica México’s deputy director for cybersecurity, spoke about how client confidence is similarly important to a business like his, noting that the company has both an external focus on security in making clients feel secure, and also an internal one to ensure its employees utilize best security practices. "For businesses, to not have a security plan doesn't just put the business at risk, but the existence of the business itself," he said.

Lastly, Oliver González Barrales, the general director for the Mexican Federal Police’s Specialized Center for Technological Response, talked about the force’s new strategy that, for the first time, includes specific actions and objectives related to cybersecurity, namely prevention, reducing risk, and strengthening technical capacities. He called public-private collaboration on the issue "critical."

The panelists closed with a question on how companies can best work with the government to fight cyber crime. Ornelas cautioned that the goal isn’t to criminalize technology—“Crime is crime, whether it happens online or offline,” she said—but to strike a careful balance of protection while maintaining individual liberties and rights.

Watch a video of the full panel below: