A Secure & Jolly Christmas: Navigating the Season with InfoSec Awareness

The ISC2 London Chapter held its final event of the year courtesy of Hiscox Insurance who hosted us at their amazing office on Bishopsgate. 

As per our usual cadence, we had 3 speakers.  Our first speaker was Edward Parsons, who is the relatively new Head of ISC2 Europe and provide the chapter members with a good update of the changes that ISC2 have been making, the strategy for the coming years, and of course what we all want to hear, what support is provided to its members and to the chapter.

Hadyn Brooks, CEO of Risk Ledger then provided a highly informative and entertaining talk about Third Party Risk.   During the past year we have all witnessed a steady year on year increase in the number of third parties and organisations across the supply chain in general coming under attack with increasing frequency.   Understanding our third-party risk is a critical component to understanding your overall risk so that you can plan and prepare accordingly.  There are few of us in cyber security and amongst the CISO community who have now not ever received that notification from a third party stating that they have been compromised!  The fallout from MOVEit is still on-going.

Our final speaker of the evening was Trevor Pester, Head of Policy, Risk and Governance from Hiscox who spoke to us about Culture and Behaviours.  Whilst understanding our threats, of which Third Party/Supply chain is one of them, how we deal with those threats starts with our people.   You can put in place all the technology to-hand, but if an organisation is not open to changing how it works to accommodate security, then it exposes itself to unnecessary compromise.   We all know that the majority of breaches and network attacks are due to account compromise and most account information is still discovered via social engineering and social media platforms.

Networking drinks were provided, again with many thanks to Hiscox for the chapter in the great Art Café with a view overlooking St Pauls’ cathedral.

As stated, this was our final event for 2023 and we are extremely grateful to all those who have hosted us and sponsored us as we just could not continue without that support, and Hiscox completed a great year, and we look forward to 2024!