Prof. David Basin

The Role of Information Security

David Basin has been Full Professor at ETH Zurich since 2003 and holds the Chair for Information Security at the Department of Computer Science. He received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Reed College in 1984, his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1989, and his Habilitation from the University of Saarbrücken in 1996. In an interview with Katja Abrahams he talks about his current lectures, the growing role of information security and the challenges of the future.

March 2007

Your research area is Information Security. What does that actually mean?

Information Security addresses how we protect information in hostile environments. An example, relevant for Switzerland, is banking. You would like that others cannot see or alter your bank balance, deny you banking services, or perhaps even know that you have a bank account at some particular bank. Information Security provides the technologies to address such requirements and methods to integrate them into systems.

How central is Information Security within computer science?

Most systems today have security requirements and therefore some knowledge of the topic is essential for system design, analysis, and construction. More generally, security is deeply intertwined with many areas of computer science, such as software and hardware engineering, distributed computing, databases, and the like. Moreover, the theoretical foundations of Information Security include complexity theory, probability theory, logic, and discrete mathematics, e.g., for designing and formally reasoning about cryptographic algorithms or protocols and systems built using them.

Which courses will you teach this summer semester?

I will teach the "Kernvorlesung" Information Security and co-teach together with Jean-Raymond Abrial the course Formal Methods and Functional Programming. Note that the second course is not directly related to Information Security. However, it is relevant for building correct systems, i.e., systems that meet their specifications, which in turn is relevant for building secure systems.

The department offers a specialization track in Information Security as part of the Master Program. What does this track include and why might students choose it?

The contents of the Masters Program are available at www.infsecmaster.ethz.ch. Srdjan Capkun is currently working on restructuring and rationalizing our offering here and I encourage all interested students to consult this site for information on our program. We have not attempted to be comprehensive in our offerings; this would not be possible as the topic is too broad. Instead we have focused on core areas, cryptography and cryptographic protocols, formal methods for security, security engineering, and network and wireless security, which (not coincidentally) coincide with our research foci. Students should choose it who are interested in these topics! It should go without saying that Information Security offers plenty of intellectual challenges and practical relevance.

Are there any topics you would like to teach but just can't fit into the course catalog?

The catalog is flexible, but my time unfortunately is less so. I would love to offer additional lab courses, e.g., in constructing secure distributed applications. But it is very time consuming to build up such a course. One lab is enough for now.

Are you concerned with technology issues only? Or are you a bit of an idealist trying to make the world a safer and better place?

A bit of both. With respect to technologies, my interest is not so much particular products or standards, but rather the general ideas and abstractions underlying them. With respect to making the world safer and better, I would like to contribute to methods and tools for this. I am motivated though less by idealism than by the intellectual challenge combined with the practical necessity of these tasks.

What are currently the most challenging issues in Information Security?

Security is an area with no shortage of challenges, some of which are among the core challenges of computer science. Here are several that I find particularly compelling: How can design and implementation errors be reduced? Can systems be designed to be secure by construction? Alternatively, given that we cannot always reinvent the wheel in practice, how can secure systems be built from insecure, typically "commercial off-the-shelf'' components?

What should be done to increase people's awareness of security risks?

Education. Of course, the better we design systems to be secure by default, the less we have to educate the users. But hardly any system is secure against a sufficiently naive user.

Are we becoming too dependent on computer technology?

We have a high dependency due to the fact that computers control so much of our modern infrastructures, e.g., communication, transportation, and energy distribution and, of course, IT is at the center of many industries, e.g., financial services. We are only too dependent in the sense that it is inconceivable to give up the tremendous productivity gains that IT has brought about. I see this as a testimony to the value of IT, not itself a problem. Of course, we must protect these infrastructures and the failure to do so has wide ranging repercussions. In this respect, security has moved in the last few decades from primarily being a military concern, e.g., used to protect communication during wars, to being everyone's concern.

How about information security regulations and legislation? Are there any international agreements?

There are various standards. For example the Common Criteria (ISO 15408) is a standard for certifying security critical systems, whereby the highest Evaluation Assurance Levels require the use of formal methods. There are similar standards (e.g., FIPS 140-2) for assessing cryptographic equipment. Such standards have an important role to play in increasing the trustworthiness of systems and improving the processes used to construct and validate them. But one must understand their limitations. These topics are discussed in detail in my security engineering course.

You are the head of the ZISC, the Zurich Information Security Center. What is the role of the ZISC?

The Zurich Information Security Center (ZISC) is a collaboration between members of ETH working in Security (Basin, Capkun, Maurer, and Plattner) and partners from industry and administration (armasuisse, Credit Suisse, and IBM Zurich Research Laboratory). The mission of the ZISC is to carry out cutting-edge research and education in Information Security. Students interested in security should consult the ZISC home page (www.zisc.ethz.ch) to learn about various ZISC activities that they can take part in. For example, we have a colloquium where speakers from academia and industry speak about different topics in Information Security, both theoretical and practical. This spring, a number of ZISC-supported researchers at ETH Zurich will present their research results.

Is there anything special you would like to say to our students or future students?

Our goal in our studies program is to produce one of the top offerings, worldwide, in Information Security. Our program is still very much evolving and we are grateful for all kinds of input and feedback that we receive from students.