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Nearly 20,000 gather for 'Europe's biggest cybersecurity event'
Wed, 6th Jun 2018
FYI, this story is more than a year old

InfoSec Europe 2018 launched in London on June 5th and will continue through to the 7th.

There is expected to be in excess of 19,500 cybersecurity professionals from Europe and beyond crowded into the halls over the event's duration to benefit from the region's largest and most comprehensive conference programme with more than 400 exhibitors showcasing their wares.

Yesterday was opened with a keynote from former Talk Talk CEO Baroness Dido Harding to share her perspective on cybersecurity. She is certainly well qualified after leading the company through one of Britian's most high-profile cyberattacks when the firm was fined £400,000 by data protection regulator the ICO.

“The digital world is a great thing but only if it is civilised. Transparency helps that civilisation and improves safety. Our generation is building the social, moral and legal scaffolding of the digital world,” says Baroness Harding.

“Both tech and commercial functions need to engage closely with each other and debate key issues openly in order to create the right rules and regulations, improve education and awareness, and develop the right culture for a strong digital world. CEOs need to spend quality time with their organisation's brightest IT stars and learn what they are worried about. Cybersecurity is at the heart of this – it shouldn't be all cloak and dagger, it should be a risk that is acknowledged and mitigated.

Other speakers on the day (with many more to come over the coming two days) included Just Eat CISO Kevin Fielder, Vodafone group technology security director Emma Smith, LinkedIn CISO Corey Scott, and Sainsbury's CISO Mun Valiji.

A new feature for the 2018 show is ‘Geek Street', which the organisers have described as “as an immersive zone where information security practitioners will share technical research.” Day one saw the area as a hive of activity with presentations, hands-on challenges, lock-picking and more.

There is still many more to come and we'll be onsite for the duration so stay tuned.