Cybersecurity Expert

A list of Cyber and Information Security conferences to consider attending in 2019. Conference are not only great places to learn about the evolving cyber threat landscape and proven security good practices, but to network with industry leading security professionals and likeminded enthusiasts, to share ideas, expand your own knowledge, and even to make good friends. JANUARY 2019 SANS Cyber Threat Intelligence Summit Monday 21st & Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel, VA, USA https://www.sans.org/event/cyber-threat-intelligence-summit-2018 AppSec California 2019 (OWASP) Tuesday 22nd & Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Annenberg Community Beach House, Santa Monica, USA https://2019.appseccalifornia.org/ PCI London Thursday 24th January 2019 Park Plaza Victoria Hotel, London, UK https://akjassociates.com/event/pcilondon The Future of Cyber Security Manchester Thursday 24th January 2019 Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, UK https://cybermanc...

A guest article authored by Jim Ducharme, Vice President of Engineering and Product Management at RSA 1. Prepare for IOT, the “Identity of Things” From personal assistants, to wearables, smartphones, tablets and more, there is no shortage of connected devices. The explosion of IOT has finally reached a tipping point where the conversation of identity will start to take on a whole new meaning. The billions of new digital identities being created don’t come without risk – including new privacy and cybersecurity vulnerabilities. With businesses and consumers all in on IOT, how do we protect and securely manage the “identity” of the things?  2. Biometrics vs. the Four-Digit Pin Biometrics are under a lot of pressure these days to be the silver bullet of authentication. So how could a simple 4-digit pin, which has at most 10,000 possible combinations, give biometrics like FaceID with a 1 in 50 million entropy a run for its money? The industry will come to realize when 4-digit pin...

A constant theme from this year’s RSA Conference Europe, is the idea of security intelligence collaboration, namely the capture, sharing and data mining of “Big Data’, to detect and prevent security incidents and attacks, but will it ever take off? The concept of gathering and using big data is nothing new, from Google to your supermarket loyalty card; big data mining has been very successfully used commercially for at least a decade, not to mention the alleged big data mining said to be conducted by the NSA. This collaborative led intelligence approach has potential and I believe it could be effective if conceived and built smartly, however I fear the issue will be with the data sharing. Most of the existing big data models in use are covert, and organisations aren’t collaborating, so they do not share their big data analytics. This is a fairly obvious approach, as the whole idea of mining big data in their case is for commercial advantage and gain. So I imagine ...

‘Anonymity is the Enemy of Privacy’ was a point stressed by Art Coviello, the Executive Chairman of RSA, in the opening keynote of the RSA Conference Europe 2013.   This point is controversial to say the least, especially to a European audience, with mainly Europeans still rocking in the wake of the massive NSA covert internet surveillance allegations against European leaders, and millions of EU citizens. Many privacy advocates hold a polar opposite view to Art, believing anonymity online is a fundamental ingredient for online privacy. Art's perspective also highlights the difference in attitudes towards privacy harboured between the United States and Europe. The European Union was built on its citizen rights, including the right to privacy, a right the EU wishes to see exercised online, whereas the US view tends to be 'privacy is dead', believing the right to online privacy has been given up and the privacy fight lost.

HotSpot Shield have created an Identity Theft InfoGraphic which I'm happy to share. InfoGraphic explains the malicious actors behind ID theft, some of the techniques they use and how to protect yourself.  

The keynote speaker at this year's RSA Conference Europe  is certainly of interest. Sir Seb Coe was widely applauded as delivering an outstanding Olympic Games in London last year.  The security of the games was always a great concern from the day after it was announced London was to receive the games back in 2007, but it is the cyber security aspect of the games which interests me. The games were subjected to cyber threats, including a specific cyber threat aimed at taking down power supplies to the games stadiums, so it will be fascinating to learn more about the planning, preparation and the testing of the London 2012 cyber defence. I always recommend the RSA Europe Conference to fellow UK security professionals, especially those new to our busy and complex sector.  It’s a great event to learn about the emerging threats, defences and the latest security thinking, with plenty of quality sessions to choose from. The conference is also a great place to network with fe...

A conference is only as good as its speakers, specifically the speaker's subject matter expertise, presentation subject and presenting ability, in this the RSA Conference Europe succeeds where many others conferences fail miserably. The best InfoSec speakers do not regurgitate topics with arrogance, repeating empty messages to sell products and services. No, the best speakers converse with their fellow information security professionals at the same level, informing and exploring the latest and future issues that will matter to business. Speakers are not bound and gagged by their company sales and marketing reps, are free to share and open up new ideas, new thinking, new solutions, and so challenge thinking and generating discussion by security professionals and businesses influencers beyond the conference, which ultimately leads to improvements for society. Why? Because ultimately when businesses get information security wrong, it is everyone that ends up footing the impact, whethe...

The Premier League Champions of Information Security Conferences, RSA Conference Europe 2012  is just less than two months away. The keynote line-up has been confirmed and it is looking finger licking good with an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) flavour to it. Jimmy Donal Wales,  Founder of Wikipedia Art. Coviello (RSA) Intelligence-Driven Security: The New Model Francis deSouza  (Symantec)  The Art of Cyber War: Know Thy Enemy, Know Thyself Adrienne Hall (Microsoft) Risks and Rewards in Cloud Adoption Herbert 'Hugh' Thompson  Securing the Human: Our Industry’s Greatest Challenge Philippe Courtot  (Qualys) Big Data : Big Threat or Big Opportunity for Security? Bruce Schneier  (BT) Trust, Security, and Society Joshua Corman   "Are We Getting Better?" Why We Don't Know. What We Can Do About It. Misha Glenny   The Struggle for Control of the Internet I always recommend information security professionals, whether new to the profes...

This week there has been plenty of concern following RSA’s announcement about their two-factor authentication solution, SecurID, which was subjected to a sophisticated cyber attack.  A lot of people are asking for my views on the risk in continuing to use RSA SecurID following this attack, so I am going to attempt to explain this risk in simple terms, but it won’t be easy. Facts What are the facts? Well we simply don’t know exactly what has been stolen from RSA at present, as RSA aren’t providing details beyond “the attack resulted in certain information being extracted from RSA's systems. Some of that information is specifically related to RSA's SecurID two-factor authentication products”. However in Information Security we always hope for the best but prepare for the worst, the worst case scenario is all of the RSA SecurID private keys (seeds) records along with corresponding serial numbers were stolen. http://www.rsa.com/node.aspx?id=3872 Stolen Seeds? Every RSA Secu...

RSA Europe is said to be the most comprehensive information security forum held in Europe, with world leading expert speakers from the information security industry discussing and debating the hottest topics in security. It was great to see this year's conference being themed on British cryptographer Alan Turing. Turing was part of a team of code breakers working at Bletchley Park during World War II, whom in complete secrecy quite literally saved thousands of lives by breaking encrypted messages. Today Bletchley Park is a museum open to the public, completely privately funded and yet a vital part of the security industry heritage. So it was really good to see Alan Turing being highlighted by the event, but I will save my thoughts on Bletchley Park for another post, although I do urge anyone interested in general information security, cryptography or history, who has the chance to visit Bletchley Park and/or donate to the cause. For me the biggest highlight of the RSA Europe...