How do we know that the workers who secure digital infrastructures are competent and trustworthy? A vast industry has emerged to certify workers, but unlike medicine or law, cybersecurity has no authoritative certifying organization. This talk traces the origins of the cybersecurity professional certification industry to the “new economy” and problems of trust created by the associated rise of globally distributed digital infrastructures and workers in the 1980s and 1990s. Entrepreneurs and cybersecurity workers found lucrative opportunities in the professional certification industry, particularly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, increased demand for cybersecurity workers. Prominent cybersecurity workers were both powerful and precarious in the certification industry: powerful because their knowledge and reputation were highly valued for giving certifications credibility, precarious because companies often put profits ahead of workers and the larger project of cybersecurity. Governments funded and shaped the development of cybersecurity training regimens and created demand for certification. But they did not authorize any particular organization to certify workers or training programs. Instead, they helped to create a competitive marketplace for certifying experts, along with its affordances and dysfunctions.

About the Speaker

Rebecca Slayton is an associate professor in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies and the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University. Her research and teaching examine the relationships between and among risk, governance, and expertise, with a focus on international security and cooperation since World War II. Slayton’s current book project, Shadowing Cybersecurity, examines how authoritative and credible cybersecurity expertise has been historically institutionalized.

Co-sponsored by Metro Atlanta Science Studies Seminar.