Topics:
Future of Cybersecurity, Technology, The Internet, Privacy, Organizational Leadership
About Rod Beckstrom:
Rod currently serves as an advisor to multinational companies and international institutions. Mr. Beckstrom is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Council on Future of Government. As founding Director of the U.S. National Cybersecurity Center, Rod was the Federal Government’s top cybersecurity coordinator, helping to integrate activities across key departments and agencies to combat the increasingly sophisticated threat to America’s interests at home and around the world.
Rod is the co-author of four books, including the critically acclaimed business book The Starfish and The Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, which has sold more than 100,000 copies in North America and many more around the world; it has been translated into sixteen languages. With a thought-provoking view of why leaderless organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous and the Occupy movement often thrive while more structured and centralized organizations fail or decline, it lays out a new way of looking at leadership style, community and competitive strategy. Its reach has spanned the world, influencing top Pentagon generals, Tea Party activists, Arab Spring youth and countless CEOs.
Under Rod’s leadership as President and CEO of ICANN, the multinational institution that helps keep the global Internet secure, stable and unified, the Internet changed forever. His tenure was the springboard to a new era of innovation that enabled the use of Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic and other non-Latin language scripts, bridging the technical barrier that had prevented billions from coming online entirely in their primary language. Approval of new generic top-level domains under Rod’s watch laid the groundwork for hundreds of new potential domain endings – innovations like dot news and dot Dubai – that will soon come into use alongside the familiar dot com and dot net.
The global Internet was made more secure under his leadership with the addition of domain name system security extensions, or DNSSEC. He also moved ICANN firmly onto the global stage as a key player in Internet governance, negotiating and signing the Affirmation of Commitments and the IANA contract with the U.S. Government that made ICANN accountable to the world.
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. Department of Defense, 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, the Center for Strategic International Studies and numerous Young Presidents’ Organization, EO and WPO events around the global.
He is a frequent and insightful media commentator on cybersecurity, organizational leadership and technology, with appearances on BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR and C-SPAN and major interviews with Reuters, Xinhua, Associated Press, Kommersant, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, The Times of India, Bloomberg, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Gulf Times, O Globo, Handelsblatt, Le Monde and many more.
