Conference Roundup

The focus of cyber security was on Montreal last month as it played host to a North American record of 795 in person attendees from 74 countries at the 35th Annual FIRST Conference, along with over 100 virtual delegates representing an additional 16 countries. With 76 talks, 13 workshops, 16 special interest group meetings, a capture the flag and 4 panels covering information sharing, cyber insurance, universal software identity and empowering women in cyber, participants had five days packed with cyber security experts sharing their knowledge.

Lesley Carhart, Director of Incident Response for Dragos, started things off with the first keynote in the conference history focussed on critical infrastructure and industrial control systems. With some stark examples, Lesley, in typically efficient and engaging fashion, explained the threats to life and property and why cyber security for industrial control networks is so important.

Chris Lynam of the National Cybercrime Coordination Centre of the RCMP closed the conference on the role of police in cyber.

Legendary Eugene Spafford of Perdue university returned to the FIRST Conference to discuss the pitfalls with how cyber security specialists try to explain their work using analogies. Other highlights included the analysis of tools and strategies of KillNet by Sojun Ryu of S2W in South Korea, lessons on building a CSIRT in Malawi from Christopher Banda, and a talk on Internet of Things test labs by Frank Chow from Hong Kong CERT, along with workshops from CIRCL, and VirusTotal amongst others. NVIDIA provided the one completely virtual presentation in the conference to a packed room.

This year’s conference reflected the importance of diversity in addressing the cyber security challenge with speakers from 27 countries or economies from around the world representing regional viewpoints, as well as viewpoints from academia, commercial incident response, PSIRTs, national CSIRTs and non-profits. Midweek had a focus on gender diversity, with Allison Pytlak of the Stimpson Centre and Dr Nina Kollars with the United States Department of Defense presenting on the importance of gender diversity, with two all-women panels following.

Ted Norminton, with the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security and FIRST Annual Conference Program Chair said: “Our thanks go out to all the amazing speakers, trainers, sponsors, and keynotes who made this conference possible and to the people of Montreal for their hospitality. The theme this year of Empowering Communities touches both on the history of Montreal and how within cyber incident response, our regional communities and sector communities need to learn from each other and work together to meet the evolving challenge.

Published on FIRST POST: Jul-Sep 2023