FIRST sees over 1600 cybersecurity professionals from 97 countries sign up for 32nd Annual Conference

November 13, 2020 - The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams ( FIRST ) is holding its annual conference online next week. The three-day event, which is taking place online for the first time, will feature both industry experts and academics from the global community talking about the latest developments on how to prevent, detect and respond to computer security incidents. A must sign-up for incident response and security teams across the world, the conference has already seen 1600 registrations from nearly 100 countries.

Seventy-two speakers including Ronald Deibert (Citizen Lab and University of Toronto), Ben Hawkes (Google), and Kathleen Moriarty (Center for Internet Security) from 22 countries will present on a variety of subjects covering cyber resilience, building security teams, secure software development and ethics. The program includes:

• Product Security: Education and Prevention through Root Cause Analysis in Secure Software Development Lifecycle
• Defending the Community through Trusted Sharing
• Building Your Team of Teams: Applying Military Operational and Organizational Methodologies to Defend Large-Scale Enterprises
• The Craft of Cyber-Resilience: Lessons from the Trenches

The full conference line-up and program can be found here.

Ronald Deibert, Director of the Citizen Lab and Professor of Political Science Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, will host the opening keynote - Tracking Targeted Digital Threats: A View from the Citizen Lab. The keynote will cover political struggles in and through the global Internet and related technologies with regards to openness, security, and human rights. A large and largely unregulated market for commercial surveillance technology is finding willing clientele among the world's least accountable regimes. Powerful spyware tools are being used to infiltrate civil society networks, targeting the devices of journalists, human rights defenders, minority movements, and political opposition, often with lethal consequences. Meanwhile, numerous disinformation and harassment campaigns are feeding intolerance and even violence, largely without mitigation.

Drawing from the last decade of research of the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, Deibert will provide an overview of these disturbing trends and discuss some pathways to repairing and restoring the Internet as a sphere that supports, rather than diminishes, human rights.

“The annual FIRST conference is a highlight in my calendar. While we sadly cannot meet in person, I’m delighted to see that the online program made no compromise in the quality of the accepted talks. In fact, the online format has made the event accessible to people who would otherwise not have been able to participate. This is in line with our mission of becoming even more inclusive. My thanks go the FIRST events team and the program committee who are instrumental in delivering such a high profile event,” Serge Droz, Chair of FIRST said.

Past participants of the conference have included information security practitioners, executive management, network architects, system and network administrators, software and hardware vendors, security solutions providers, ISPs, law enforcement, and general computer and network security personnel. This year’s sponsors include:

• Gold: Cisco, Check Point Software Technologies LTD, DomainTools, EclecticIQ, Facebook, Secureworks, Team Cymru, VirusTotal, and VMRay
• Bronze: Fortinet
• Virtual Booth: Arctic Security, Cyware Labs, Farsight Security, and Joe Security
• Champions: Hitachi and Open Systems

The virtual conference will be held November 16-18, 2020 from 13:00-17:00 UTC daily. Registration is free to attend, register now. The presentations will be made available to view at www.first.org after the event.

To follow the conference on Twitter, follow @FIRSTdotOrg or engage with the discussion via #firstcon20.

Also available in PDF

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About FIRST

FIRST aspires to bring together incident response and security teams from every country across the world to ensure a safe internet for all. Founded in 1990, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) consists of internet emergency response teams from 540 corporations, government bodies, universities and other institutions across 95 countries in the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Oceania. www.first.org.

About the FIRST Conference

The FIRST Conference is as much a forum for sharing goals, ideas and information on how to improve global computer security as it is a place to meet like-minded experts from around the globe. Conference attendees can earn up to 25 continuing professional education credits while they learn the latest security strategies in incident management, increase their knowledge and technical insight about security problems and their solutions, and gain insights into analyzing network vulnerabilities. By attending the FIRST Conference, delegates will learn the latest security strategies in incident management and boost their knowledge and technical insight into security problems and their solutions. Sponsors of the 2020 event include: (Gold) Cisco, Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., DomainTools, EclecticIQ, Facebook, Secureworks, Team Cymru, VirusTotal, VMRay; Bronze Fortinet; (Virtual Booth) Arctic Security, Cyware Labs, Farsight Security, Joe Security; and, (Champion) Hitachi, Open Systems AG.

Media Contact

Mandy Queen
Mandy Queen PR
Tel: +852 96847365
Email: mandy@mandyqueenpr.com

Media can register to attend the conference here.