Cybersecurity Festival Day 1: Data, defence and diversity are hot topics in cyber

The Festival's first day covered important topics for any CISO and prompted thought-provoking discussions from delegates

The first day of the inaugural Cybersecurity Festival was a great success, with a series of incredible speakers and topics prompting deep discussion among the audience - and all sessions are now available on-demand.

The day opened with futurist Sophie Hackford looking at where technology - and specifically cybersecurity - is headed in the coming years. She spoke passionately about the importance of data and its worth, which can now be measured in currency rather than an intangible 'business value'. The past 15 months of virtual meetings also came up, with developments in the space potentially moving towards a 'UI-less' future, with holograms replacing 2D images.

Javvad Malik of KnowBe4 talked about recent ransomware attacks and how to defend against them in a Q&A, while the first panel of the day looked into the topical subject of how to protect your organisation in the remote working era. While most firms have policies and procedures in place, there are still many with questions - as evidenced by the lively discussion in the event chat.

After the break Jony Fischbein of Check Point took the stage to present a series of cybersecurity case studies from 2020, touching on subjects like nation state attacks, BYOD and the IoT. That trend continued into the next session, where Crowdstrike's Zeki Turedi talked about trust: a valuable commodity in the remote working age, and a major weakness in digital supply chains.

Another panel discussion closed out the morning, discussing ways to find efficiencies in security budgets. Although IT budgets are up across the industry, panelists and delegates expected this to to be a temporary move to counter the fallout from the pandemic; a return to normal could be a short, sharp shock for CISOs.

The afternoon began with a roundup of the top security stories of the last six months by Computing's Research Director, John Leonard. After this Lianne Potter of Covea Insurance joined via Zoom to talk about why the industry needs to look beyond its traditional recruitment grounds to combat modern threats. Potter emphasised that she wasn't recommending ignoring technical skills, but that having people on board who can understand the human side of cybersecurity, whom people can talk to without fear of judgement or retribution, is critical.

The last panel session of the day looked at a similar topic: building the security workforce of tomorrow. As well as siloes, communications and burn-out, the panel also covered technical and business issues like artificial intelligence and cyber insurance, as well as returning to Potter's earlier point about the importance of recruiting from outside traditional tech roles.

The audience were hyper-involved in the last sessions of the day, with lots of interest in where to look for people with a background in social sciences; how to go about retraining for cybersecurity as a non-technical individual; and many, many encouraging comments about diversity.

Thank you to all the delegates, speakers, sponsors and Computing staff who helped make the day possible. The Cybersecurity Festival continues next week with a series of roundtables on security in the pandemic; the SoC of the future; and zero-trust security. Register now to secure your spot and take part in the discussion with your peers.