Wednesday 31st July saw the first large-scale collaborative event between the (ISC)2 London Chapter, ISSA-UK and the Cloud Security Alliance [CSA], in which AON sponsored the event and provided the venue at their premises at Leadenhall. The theme of the day was Industry Challenges: Keys to the Future and it was a full house with all seats being taken up. Over 200 like-minded cybersecurity professionals and interested persons came to hear a variety of speakers followed up by a panel of SME’s who answered a range of questions directed to them by the audience!
First up, Stuart Peck Keynote OSINT, Social Engineering covering all things social engineering with an extremely entertaining recording of a phone conversation where Stuart successfully, and it has to be said quite easily manages to call up a member of staff from company x and get them to give him their login password!
This was followed by Chani Simms BSc(Hons), MBCS, CHFI, CIS LA, CIS LI talking ticking bombs, with emphasis on the importance of trust and diversity.
After a short break, the audience reconvened to listen to a frankly extremely enlightening talk by Adrian Davis, MBA, FBCS CITP, CISSP talking education. The Education piece was particularly interesting as Adrian, an expert in the field produced alarming statistics demonstrating how the Education Field in its entirety is still not attracting and retaining anywhere near the level of market share of students who could eventually come out of Education and join the Cyber Security field to fill some of the rising gaps within the sector. Right from the number of students at school taking Compute Science for GCSE [approximately 140,000] to an incredible drop-out rate of those furthering that field at A level to about 80! The metrics for those at University were no better and the key take away was for everyone within the industry to take an active part in talking at schools, careers fairs, etc.
These talks were finally followed up by a Leadership Panel of 6 SME’s, 2 of whom were from the (ISC)2 London Chapter, James Packer, the Chapter President and Liz Banbury the Chapter Secretary who had to respond to a variety of questions posed by the audience on the spot. These were questions around how can we be more inclusive when engaging those around us with a view to joining Cyber Security, to what we thought the biggest threats facing Organisations today lie, Security by Design and Software Engineering challenges and finally a round-robin of final calls to actions from each of the Panel Members out to the Audience!
Discussions continued on late into the evening in the next door Pub where some excellent networking took place!!
We look forward to welcoming everyone to our next event!
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