csis speaking

World Government Summit – Dubai – Are We Safe in a Digital World?


DLD 14 Conference Munich

pdfKeynote Topics

Rod Beckstrom is a well-known cyber security expert, Internet leader and authority on organizational leadership and social networking. He is the former President and CEO of ICANN, the global organization that help keeps the Internet secure, stable and unified, and was the founding Director of the U.S. Government’s National Cybersecurity Center. He is co-author of the critically acclaimed book The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, which has been translated into 16 languages, and is a frequent international media commentator and public speaker.

A preeminent thinker on technology issues, Rod was named one of PC World’s “Puppet Masters of the Internet” in April 2012 and included in “2012’s Digital Power 50” by The Hollywood Reporter. In 2011 he was named a “Tech Titan” by The Washingtonian magazine, and in 2010, one of the “25 Most Influential People in Intellectual Property” by the American Lawyer. He is currently Vice Chairman of the Global Council on the Future of the Internet at the Swiss-based World Economic Forum.

As a much sought-after expert, Rod has spoken at high-profile events for a wide range of organizations in more than forty countries, including Google, Microsoft, eBay, Infosys Technologies, Black Hat, DEFCON, RSA, U.S. STRATCOMM, GITEX Dubai Leaders’ Summit, Futurecom Latin America Infosys, CIO Magazine Leadership Summit, Morgan Stanley, Starbucks, TED, the Monaco Media Forum, Sogeti Consulting, The Hay Group, American Organization of Nurse Executives, United Business Media Group, the White House, the United Nations, the World Economic Forum at Davos, the Aspen Institute, Harvard University, Stanford University and the Center for Strategic International Studies and numerous YPO, EO, WPO events around the global.

Rod’s most requested keynote topics. If you have a special request regarding Rod speaking at your next event, please don’t hesitate to contact us. 

Rod speaks to attendees at the Digital Life Conference on the topic of Cyber Security. Please click here to access the speech. 

It’s a mad mad cyber world we live in today. It’s pretty simple. There are three points:
number one – anything networked can be hacked; number two- everything is being networked; so number three – everything is vulnerable.

Rod gives the keynote address at the International Legal Technology Association conference. Please click here to access the speech.

Cyber security is no longer a niche technical issue; it’s a core strategic concern for every business and government leader worldwide. Rod Beckstrom is at the forefront, leading the call to action to proactively protect the nerve center of every organization or business in the world.

Rod will engage the audience in understanding the character and extent of the cyber threat and in considering solutions to one of the most serious challenges to your organization’s future.

The presentation asks tough questions that every leader will have to face. If you are leading a business, government body or non-profit, you need to hear what Rod Beckstrom has to say.

What do the Tea Party, the Occupy movement and Al Qaida have in common? They all depend on The Starfish and the Spider: the Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations as a primary source of thought leadership ideas. How do these concepts affect your success as an organization?

Cut off the leg of a spider and you have a seven-legged creature; cut off its head and you have a dead spider. But cut off the arm of a starfish and it will grow a new one, because unlike spiders, starfish are decentralized.

While spider organizations rely on a rigid hierarchy, starfish organizations tend to organize around a shared ideology or a simple platform for communication.

Rod Beckstrom draws on a rich collection of lessons and anecdotes from today’s news to illustrate his groundbreaking model of organizational structure and leadership, and applies it to influential social movements, such as the Arab spring, that are producing historic shifts in modern politics and culture.

Starfish organizations are changing the rules of competitive strategy and leaders should take note. How can your business benefit from understanding this new dynamic? Can these principles be applied to traditional organizations? What can they teach that could affect your profitability? What is your organization: starfish or spider? And what are you going to do about it?

Internet innovation is rushing forward. Incredible new technologies like smart dust microsystems, [ambient intelligence], hummingbird-sized drones, cars driven via smartphone, and wireless implants that speak to your doctor from within your body are profoundly reshaping our future. The Internet of Things – the Internet of Everything – is turning everyday life into the ultimate online experience as more and more aspects of daily existence are coming online. An exciting – perhaps unsettling – new world is coming.

As Vice Chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Council on the Future of the Internet, former CEO of ICANN and a successful entrepreneur, Rod Beckstrom is at the intersection of innovation, technology and business, with a deep and unique understanding of the coming tech trends that will define tomorrow’s Internet.

In a lively and interactive presentation, he challenges the audience’s thinking with provocative questions that today’s rapidly evolving technology presents to the business world. How will it drive change in your organization? And what should you be doing now to prepare for the change, protect yourself from its risks and leverage its benefits?

Rod speaks about building networks through eliciting the passions and potentials of both individuals and teams. He shows how distributed communities have overcome great challenges in numerous fields because dedicated, passionate people became involved and were empowered by the very distributed nature of the organization to become leaders and accomplish great things. What are your passions? What are the passions of the people you work with or encounter? People can perform miracles when they are organized in small circles or groups around their passions.