Amrita Chowdhury

Abstract

About the Book - Breach

Breach is a cyber crime thriller. It is the first ever book to blend the unique premise of cyber crime, cancer research, medical ethics and IP laws. But ultimately, it is about intelligent storytelling and compelling grey characters that traverse the narrow divide between right and wrong, hope and despair, love and heartbreak. Breach has received advance praise from Rohit Deshpande, Professor Harvard Business School ("gripping, transcontinental drama steeped in well-researched global pharma geopolitics"); Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman Microsoft India ("the combination of cyber security, bio technology, mystery makes for a heady mixture") and many others. More details may be found at www.breach.co.in.

Speaker Bio

Author Amrita Chowdhury has written Breach, a cyber crime thriller, and Faking It, an art crime thriller. She holds engineering degrees from IIT Kanpur, UC Berkeley and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University. She holds 7 US patents for semiconductor manufacturing and has done strategy consulting and Board governance in US and Australia. She has worked in higher education and publishing.

Paper Title

Hackonomics and the emergence of Digital Age Heroes

Abstract

Clearly, there is economic gain to be had through cyber crime, as evident by the underground mafia that inhabits the dark recesses of the internet peddling everything from drugs, porn, and paid breaches. Petty infiltrators con citizens, corporations and governments every day.

Yet at the same time, we see the emergence of a new breed of heroes. Movies like The Fifth Estate, Black Hat, or Citizen Four show that the tortured, torn, disruptive hero of yore is back in a new avatar. No longer is it Spiderman, maligned by the public, sacrificing love at the altar of duty. Slick new television dramas such as White Collar no longer feature protagonists who are clearly in the right or the wrong.

Instead we have the emergence of dark, grey characters that inspire debates about right versus wrong in a society that is changing faster than rules can keep pace with, and what’s illegal today may very well emerge to be legal and ethical in the world of tomorrow.

Through Breach, a cyber crime thriller, we will look at not just the underbelly of the cyber world but also at the debates that rage around it – around the ethics and efficacy of actions, dulled through the misted lens of citizen activism and the quest for charting new paths.