The first signs of summer are starting to appear and I am sure we are all looking forward to those sunny days and BBQ’s.This also means that we are moving closer to our next UK Channel Community Meeting that takes place in Birmingham in June.
However, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on our last meeting which took place in Leeds and one that members have rated as one of the best events we have delivered. This is really down to the support of our community and the knowledge and insight shared by our range of speakers at the event, we are also fortunate to have a great team working behind the scenes. All in all, wonderful community collaboration and we have the stats to prove it.
The focus of the Leeds event was primarily around “Security” and something which all of you will be very aware of. The threat landscape is increasing and the complexity and rules governing data protection seem to be changing, making the focus for the event justified.
I really enjoyed our opening talk from David Benford of Blackstage Forensics, you did not have to be an expert to fully appreciate and enjoy the session. David highlighted the potential risks around social and mobile data. One thing that sticks in my mind is the sheer scale of mobile data, which this year is forecast to be in excess of 44 Exabytes. For those not clear what an Exabyte is, click here. It is a huge amount of data and that total is only going to increase.
During the talk, we also found out, how our social data can be used against by those with malicious or criminal intent and I don’t think many of us realised how much information is truly available from social profiles, mobile data even our photos. It really does drive home that in this new digital world, we really need to focus on safeguarding our personal and client’s data.
Throughout the day, we ran a series of breakout sessions around a wide range of related topics that included Security, Policy and Compliance initiatives, Breaking into regulated industries and John McLaughlin of Webroot ran a session on “The Modern Threat Landscape” We have continued to focus on the output and actions arising from these session, and as a result, recently released a series of guides and infographics on selling into regulated industries which can be downloaded below. We are also continuing to work on the output of these sessions and further community updates and resources will be released in the near future.
Access our Regulated Industries Resources
The afternoon kicked off with a very insightful Keynote talk from David Emm, Senior Security Researcher, Kaspersky Lab. His talk educated us about the huge increase in threats and how these continue to build on a daily basis.
A standout statistic for me, was that in 1994 one new virus every hour was identified, move to 2016 and we now have 310,000 new threat samples every hour. David’s talk also educated members on the differing types of threats and the growing complexity of identifying and eradicating cyber threats such as ransomware.
After the additional breakout sessions around our Dream IT initiative, being a leader in managed services and growing services using our “Security Wizard” tool we moved to the final keynote speaker. The close of the day was an interesting presentation on “Social Engineering / People Hacking”. This was delivered by Jenny Radcliffe of Negotiated Intelligence and focused on how psychology and social engineering can be used to leverage information and assist with hacking of companies and individuals to exploit vulnerabilities.
The insight and clever psychology gripped the audience and highlighted the important need to never forget that humans often stand behind the technology under attack, and are a good starting point for malicious activities.
For me personally, these events are always great not only with the vast array of topics covered, but also the chance to connect with familiar faces and meet a number of new ones. It also provides a great platform and sounding board to understand what it is the UK team can do to help our community and the issues that face our members on a day to day basis.
Feedback from the event was fantastic with 100% of you rating the event as excellent or good. This does certainly throw down the gauntlet for the upcoming Birmingham event, but am confident that we will exceed the results and value that was delivered in Leeds.
If you missed the event or would like to revisit some of the key topics, we have David Emm of Kaspersky Labs hosting our “What, How, Who and Why of Computer Malware Registration” webinar on the 4th of May.
In addition registrations are now open for the next community meeting being held in Birmingham on the 14th and 15th of June and myself and the team hope to see you there.
Following on from David Emm’s talk in Leeds join us for
“The WHAT, HOW, WHO and WHY of Computer Malware Registration”
4th of May 2016
CompTIA UK Community Meeting
Hyatt Hotel, Birmingham
14th & 15th June
