Unified Security – Improving the Future

800 IT security experts gather at international FIRST Conference in the German capital

Berlin, June 18th 2015 – As the 27th annual Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) conference taking place this week in Berlin shows, trust is key to the current debate about internet security and the protection of sensitive data. From 14th to 19th June the international FIRST Conference, that ends tomorrow, brings together expertise from more than 800 IT security experts from 68 countries in the German capital. The purpose of the event: To increase the security of digital technology and infrastructure worldwide.

"In order to tackle the challenges of the digital age we need a trust-based collaboration of IT experts across all countries around the world. This is exactly what we mean when we talk about Improving Security Together. The expert knowledge that FIRST brings together is an important resource for improving internet security – and this in turn benefits the economy, politics, science as well as society as a whole, says Maarten Van Horenbeeck, Chairman of FIRST.Org, Inc.

Cornelia Rogall-Grothe, undersecretary of state of the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Federal Commissary for IT, opened the conference on Monday. Her keynote praised FIRST's commitment to promoting global collaboration in IT security. Over 100 presentations, workshops and discussions with experts from leading international companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Siemens, Intel Corp. or the World Bank Group contributed to the exchange of experience and knowledge.

All members recognize that the digital age brings many opportunities but with those opportunities there also come risks. During conference sessions there was an open and practical discussion about how security risks can best be handled and how a reliable and sustainable information flow among specialists from around the world can be created and designed. Best practice case studies showed possible solutions, while presentations of innovations and developments helped to create change for the future.

The 27th FIRST-Conference did not only point out the economic, political and scientific relevance of digital technology. It also showed that cyber incidents can be prevented and intercepted if experts from around the world are closing ranks and mutual trust and cooperation is enabled, and this year's FIRST Conference in Berlin was a practical example of this cooperation in action.

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About FIRST

FIRST is the premier organization and recognized global leader in incident response. Membership of FIRST enables incident response teams to respond to security incidents more effectively, reactively as well as proactively. FIRST brings together a variety of computer security incident response teams from government, commercial, and educational organizations. Its aim is to foster cooperation and coordination in incident prevention, to stimulate rapid reaction to incidents, and to promote information sharing among members and the community at large. Please find attached more information about FIRST and this year's conference.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Celina Lelle
ADVICE PARTNERS GmbH
Tel: +49 30 2123422-46
Email: celina.lelle@advicepartners.de

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Please download the full release at first-press-release-20150618.pdf.