My main worry, and the core of my research, is that our cybersecurity ecosystem is slowly but surely aging and getting old and that aging is becoming an operational risk. This is happening not only because of growing complexity, but more importantly because of accumulation of controls and measures whose effectiveness are uncertain. I introduce a new term for this aging phenomenon: cyber senescence. I will begin my lecture with a short historical overview in which I sketch a development over time that led to this worry for the future of cybersecurity. It is this worry that determined my research agenda and its central theme of the role of uncertainty in cybersecurity. My worry is that waste is accumulating in cyberspace. This waste consists of a multitude of overlapping controls whose risk reductions are uncertain. Unless we start pruning these control frameworks, this waste accumulation causes aging of cyberspace and could ultimately lead to a system collapse.

翻译：我的主要担忧，也是我研究的核心，在于我们的网络安全生态系统正在缓慢而确定地老化和衰败，而这种老化正逐渐成为一种运营风险。这一现象的发生不仅源于日益增长的复杂性，更重要的是由于大量控制措施和手段的累积，其有效性却充满不确定性。针对这种老化现象，我引入了一个新术语：网络衰老。在讲座开始时，我将简要回顾历史，概述导致我对网络安全未来产生这种担忧的演变过程。正是这种担忧决定了我的研究议程及其核心主题——不确定性在网络安全中的作用。我担心的是，网络空间正在积累“废物”。这些废物由大量重叠的控制措施构成，其风险降低效果并不确定。除非我们开始修剪这些控制框架，否则这种废物的积累将导致网络空间的老化，并最终可能导致系统崩溃。