Heavy-hitters from the cyber and defense communities will be in Shreveport this week to attend “Fly and Fight in Cyberspace,” a three-day symposium sponsored by entities involved in creating Air Force Cyber Command at Barksdale Air Force Base.

The event will be Tuesday through Thursday at the Shreveport Convention Center, with major sessions happening the latter two days.

“The cyber symposium brings together national experts, industry and academia for the first meeting of its kind to examine the relationships of cyber to national security, homeland security, commerce and education,” said Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder Jr., commander of 8th Air Force.

Elder’s unit has partnered with the Cyber Innovation Center, among others, to bring the symposium here.

The event borrows momentum from a packed-attendance introduction to cyberspace presented at the Bossier Civic Center last month, but differs from the initial event in focus and scope. The Bossier Civic Center event featured two speakers, Rick Davis of the Cummings Research Park in Alabama, and Craig Spohn, executive director of the new Cyber Innovation Center being created in Bossier City to complement the military mission developing at Barksdale Air Force Base.

That Bossier City event also was geared to the general public, offering a broad view of cyberspace, what it means to the public and the impact it could have on the local and regional economy.

“We have seen cyber play an increasingly important role in the military, business and academic communities over the past few years,” Elder said. “Our goal is to cross-flow information and to establish relationships that build upon the work accomplished in many pockets of excellence across the nation.”

This week’s symposium offers a broader array of speakers covering more nuanced topics, including business, national and military security, the politics of cyber and its impact on the military planning and execution of the future.

According to Spohn, some 1,500 people had signed up for the symposium by the time online registration ended.

The event will have an international flavor. Among those attending and speaking will be Lauri Almann, permanent undersecretary of the Estonian Ministry of Defense.

His topic will be “Cyber Attack!! — Estonia: A Real-World Example … and How They Recovered.” Estonia was the victim of a deliberate cyber attack this spring, an attack that virtually brought the tiny Baltic nation’s electronic infrastructure, banking, government and education to a halt.

There also will be discussion panels featuring some of the deep thinkers in the cyber world, beginning with the symposium’s opening event, Tuesday’s Louisiana Tech University-hosted “CyberSpace Research Workshop for Academics.” Panels Wednesday and Thursday afternoons will cover a broad range of specific interest areas in cyber technology, warfare and planning, as well as academic facets.

One of the industry experts attending will be David Aucsmith, Microsoft’s senior director of advanced technologies and cyber security.

He thinks the impact of cyber technology, both as it relates to defense and industry, will be profound, and an area of prolonged growth.

“I think it will be a large growth area,” Aucsmith told The Times. “A substantial amount of my company, and other companies, is dedicated in one way or another to the defense of its infrastructures, in our case the products we build. Even when IT spending is relatively flat, that spent on security and IT security-related issues was a continuing upward trend. And I think that’s going to be there for us for some time.”

In addition to 8th Air Force and the Cyber Innovation Center, hosts for the three-day event are the Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., Air Force Cyber Command (Provisional) and the Ark-LA-Tex Chapter of the Armed Forces Communication and Electronics Association.