Vautrinot, Stankey,  Song.jpg A panel at Fortune Brainstorm Tech this morning focused on "Internet Security in the Age of Wikileaks" where representatives of the military, the big network providers, and university researchers all talked about what was being done to make our networks more secure and what else could be done.

When asked by the moderator, Geoff Colvin of Fortune, whether we're always going to be playing catch-up on security, Dawn Song, Associate Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley, talked about "security by design," saying systems have to be designed with fundamental security architectures from the beginning. She pointed to the security architecture in Google Chrome and how newer languages like C++ are adding better security features.

John Stankey, president and CEO of AT&T Business Solutions, said security was an important concern for AT&T and its customers, but it was likely to remain an "arms race" and a continuing issue.He said that since the start of the year, AT&T has found 11,000 malware traces, only about 30 percent of which are caught by commercial software. Security at the perimeter was getting harder, he said, so there needs to be more focus on security within the core of the network. Shrinking the perimeter, working more in the core, and thinking about design (such as compartmentalizing data) will be big trends going forward, he said.

Major General Suzanne Vautrinot, Commander of Air Force Network Operations at Lackland Air Force Base, agreed that it wasn't just about the perimeters. She talked about layers of defense, just as you would have in the physical world, and trying to have fewer "touch points." She discussed how the Air Force has moved from hundreds of touch points to less than two dozen.

Colvin talked about how we've seen governments attacking private contractors, and private individuals attacking government. Vaultrinot talked about how the number of suppliers has changed, and how the government depends on lots of private companies, from power suppliers to logistics companies to technology firms, which is why the government is setting up more lines of communications; and trying to come up with ways of sharing some material without sharing identity information.

Vaultrinot was careful about wording, saying that if there was an "attack" that was nation-state aggressive and had very specific connotations, there were different reactions for different kinds of activities and each kind of situation required specific planning. She said the government might do offense, but couldn't discuss details.

Stankey said there were current 200,000 bot nets and there's a cat and mouse game to find out about them. He said AT&T was plying offense, setting up traps for the bot nets, and that industries and the government were communicating,which has led to things like the recent arrests of some hackers. Song said her group was looking at finding vulnerabilities in malicious code, which would help defend against the botnets.

An audience member said that the Internet was not designed with security in mind, and it either needs to be completely replaced or we need new networks for defense, power, and financial services.