Training staff and ensuring that employees understand basic security steps were the key priorities identified for over 100 business professionals who attended the Logicalis CI cyber security event on 20 March.
The conference was attended by people from across Jersey’s business community who heard expert global training, testing and product providers share their experiences of helping companies to mitigate the risk posed by hackers and data breach. They also provided recent information and statistics on the scale of the security risk and the ways in which international businesses are now trying to change employee behavior to provide a layer of defence.
Logicalis CI’s Managed Security Services Director, Ricky Magalhaes: “The numbers who attended today shows that businesses are beginning to understand that they need to take cyber security seriously. Attacks are ever more prevalent and managers need to be aware of the risks and ensure that their staff also understand what their role is in protecting company data. The theme which ran through all the talks we had today is that no matter what technology you invest in, the crucial first step is to train your staff and make security a normal part of their day.
“Companies need to think far more broadly than simply reacting to a recent or existing threat and I hope that everyone who came along got a sense of the positive steps that they can take.”
The conference covered a number of major issues from taking out cyber security insurance to the changing face of phishing and the fact that email compromise and gaining account privileges remain one of the main threats from malicious hacks.
Security scientist Joe Carson, from software company Thycotic was one of the industry experts who spoke at the conference, sharing his experience of testing businesses resilience to attack. He emphasized that it was crucial that cyber security information and actions needed to be as simple as possible and fully aligned to each business.
“What is important about these events is that they bring everyone together to share their experiences. Everyone has different priorities and challenges in their daily working life and they want to be able to do their job without interference. What we are always trying to get across is that we need to introduce cyber security to reduce risk but it is not a goal in itself – it is there so that you can carry on doing your job securely,” he said.
Experts representing Cisco, KnowBe4, Thycotic, McAfee, Sophos and Bromium all delivered presentations and were on hand for a panel Q&A at the end of the conference.
