M33t the Press: CyberSafety Got Real: Now What?

This fireside chat, part of the I Am The Cavalry track at BSides Las Vegas 2022, features Wired's Lily Hayne Newman and SC Media's Joe Uchill reflecting on how security coverage has changed since the group began warning about connected infrastructure nine years earlier. The moderator frames the discussion around the gap between early warnings, made before harm had been proven, and today's reports of attacks on water, fuel, schools and patient care.

The panelists compare the news environment of roughly 2013 with the present. Early coverage tended to focus on breaches and record-sized attacks, while today's reporting is driven by individual incidents and the need for daily output. They describe a thinning of specialist beats, many experienced reporters moving into corporate or PR roles, and a heavy reliance on enterprise-focused publications whose readers want guidance for their own organisations rather than public-interest analysis. Multi-disciplinary stories about supply chains or public-private responsibility for utilities are hard to staff. Ransomware is discussed as a business model that has grown faster than efforts to stop it.

Later the conversation turns to international coverage and language barriers, and to why slow-moving risks such as healthcare disruption get less attention than a single named victim. The panelists suggest wider source networks, earlier relationships between researchers and reporters, and fiction or documentaries as ways to reach the public. The takeaway is that public-interest reporting needs time, expertise and sustained attention.