Get ahead of the posse on cybersecurity at this year’s expo
Office 365 is used by over a million companies worldwide, holding circa 46 per cent of the global market for office suites including email; but it comes with inherent risks and security gaps, a fact that 56 per cent of us are currently not considering as we trust the security capabilities built into the platform!
Furthermore, as email remains the number one attack vector (with a staggering 90 per cent+ of cyberattacks using email phishing, spear-phishing, business email compromise), and is vital to business communications, it is clear that business leaders need to minimise risk and add an additional layer of protection when using Microsoft 365.
This is one of the hot topics to be debated in the Leopardstown Pavilion on April 28, where the Cyber Expo & Conference Ireland event will host a panel of experts discussing the cyber security challenges for our MS Office 365 deployments.
Redmond O’Leary, an executive business adviser whose technical background and decades of experience give him a strong grasp of the overall challenge, will facilitate the session. It will include talks from Bitdefender (Dan Pitman, director of technical solutions on cyber resilience for the 21st century), Barracuda (Charles Smith, consulting solutions, on mitigating the risk of ransomware & M365 data loss with cloud based protection), Censornet (Richard Walters, chief technology officer, plan smart: the future is SASE), Cyglass (dark threat protection & mitigation), Watchguard (Martin Lethbridge, senior sales, on defending against an evolving threat landscape) and Webroot (Stephen Wood, director of Solution Consulting, on proactive security posture for an evolving world).
Another strategically important and related topic which is always a must for business leaders to attend is that of Identity & Access Management (IAM), even more so during and post Covid-19 with remote/hybrid working now becoming the norm. It is important for businesses to monitor who is actually accessing their systems and with digitalisation multiplying the number of applications used by organisations, the consequence is additional pressure on the organisation to have a robust Identity and Access Management strategy.
But what does that that actually mean and where do you start? Dr Vivienne Mee, forensic specialist in cybersecurity and founder of the VMGroup, will host a business session to help understand the complex framework of policies, processes and technologies that is IAM, which enable organisations to manage digital identities and control user access to critical corporate information. By assigning users with specific roles and ensuring they have the right level of access to corporate resources and networks, IAM improves security and user experience, enables better business outcomes and increases the viability of mobile and remote working and cloud adoption.
The IAM session will feature talks from leading identity expert organisations including Ascertia (Geoff Bartlett, customer success, on establishing trust & assurance in the digital world), Burning Tree (David Lello, CISO, on customer identity innovations spearheading digital change), Entrust (Simon Broadbent, channel manager, on securing the hybrid workforce by using a zero-trust approach; Iain Beveridge, senior marketing, on securing your clouds by securing your keys), Systancia (Sabrina Hamed, SaaS channel manager, on how PAM solutions allow you to protect your critical IT assets against cyberattacks).
However, what if all this is in place, you are feeling good about the strategies you have put in place to minimise business risk, and then you are compromised by another party?
This is the focus of our final stream under review today – Compliance and third Party Risk Management. Businesses have multiple partners and supply-chain vendors with whom they exchange information. Increasingly this information exchange is via digital channels and incorporates integration between the IT systems of the various organisations. While this integration has made business transactions much more straightforward and has provided widespread benefits, it has also increased cybersecurity risk.
This Compliance & Risk Management discussion, led by Carmel Somers, human capital strategist, ICT Skillnet, will aim to provide insights into planning a cybersecurity strategy and will highlight how important the cybersecurity profile and hygiene of any organisation is in relation to its cyber safety.
The session will host speakers from Iboss, National Standards Authority Ireland (NSAI) and Panorays.
Iboss will discuss how their Zero Trust Edge prevents breaches by making applications, data and services inaccessible to attackers while allowing trusted users to securely and directly connect to protected resources from anywhere. Dennis Ryan, certification specialist from NSAI will educate on cyber resilience and the future EU cybersecurity certification framework; and Matan Or-El, chief executive of Panorays, will outline best practices for effectively addressing third party security risk.
With the Expo set to host circa 30+ IT & OT security software vendors and 20+ IT/OT service providers, the day will not disappoint and will continue its pursuit of demystifying cybersecurity and keeping organisations up to date on trends and developments in the global marketplace.
The Cyber Expo & Conference Ireland will be held at the Leopardstown Pavilion, Dublin on Thursday April 28, 8am-5pm. To register, visit cyberexpoireland.ie
Gloss