Lieutenant General Ulrich Wolf
Former Director of NATO CIS Agency

Before I introduce our speaker, I would like to thank Roger very much for raising the importance during this conference over the last three to four years of the topic of information technology and its influence and impact on the political and military landscape. When I first participated in this conference, I was part of the cyber defense panel, which was the last panel on the Sunday afternoon. At that time everybody at the conference was looking for his luggage to head off home with as fast as he could, but now this topic is being addressed for the second day, and it is my prediction that in about five years we will have Bill Gates introducing the conference.

I think that it is very appropriate that the topic of IT security, IT support, and living with IT on the business side and on the private side has moved to the center of our interest. We can see that interest here at the conference when we look around the table in the conference room—participation is provided about 50% by the IT industry. That is a clear sign that when we look into the security of our nations and of our Alliance, cyber defense is something that is gaining more and more interest and more and more importance. We are moving it from a technical challenge to a strategic challenge, and I am quite convinced that in the near future we will base the effort in the field of information security on a comprehensive approach. I am also convinced that we will see the Alliance and our different nations approaching this challenge on the basis of some sort of general defense plan, something as comprehensive as we had it during the times of Cold War.