Cybersecurity experts flocked to the RSA Conference 2019, hosted in Singapore from 16th to 18th of July. Several resources have described this years’ conference as “a success with thought-provoking and useful topics”, and the attendees all seem to agree.
Strong Themes at RSA Conference 2019
At past cybersecurity conferences, it seems that participants mainly focused on punting new products and their exceptional specifications. In 2019, however, other themes came to light. The main themes were unwavering in their focus on:
- Innovation in the industry,
- The increase in the use of AI (artificial intelligence) and the tech that supports it,
- The involvement of youth in the fight against cybersecurity threats,
- The possibility of collaboration between security agencies, academia, researchers, and governments.
Informative Content Designed to Support the Themes of the Conference
Content presented to industry experts was informative and valuable to numerous fields. The material covered included:
- Privacy
- Security
- Cyber risk leadership
- The roll-out of global threat detection systems
- Security forensics
- Methods of industrial system cyber threat countering
Information and experience sharing was also a significant theme at the conference, with several speciality topics including:
- eFraud
- Law enforcement
- Strategy
- Architecture and data security
- Cloud security
- Mobile security
- IoT security
With 100 sessions and a myriad of well-respected keynote speakers in the industry, there was undoubtedly much to see and do for the cyber experts in attendance.
Future Trends and Highlights
While a great deal of attention was given to security threats facing the industry at present, for many cyber experts, future security trends were a highlight.
Security, privacy, legislature and foreign affairs were just some of the topics discussed in-depth. The focus of these topics veered away from the technical side of things, focusing instead on how these elements will impact on the future of cybersecurity and the industry.
The RSA Conference addressed issues such as the state-sponsored attack which hasn’t seen much progress since 2015. As cyber-warfare remains a real threat, it seems that the stumbling block is in the implementation of an actionable agreement that dictates acceptable behaviour among different countries and states in cyber space.
A responsive Security Operation Centre was set up for the duration of the conference. The centre observed the behaviour of attendees on the network traffic without interfering. The purpose of the centre was to determine just how security conscious attendees were, and the results were astounding. Over the course of the week, the op centre detected numerous unencrypted emails containing confidential information and malware submissions.
Future Threat Trends
When it comes to future threats and warnings evaluated and reviewed during the course of the conference, the reminders and memory refreshers were welcomed. Keynote speakers paid particular attention to the following trending and future threats:
- The ability of hackers to bypass two-factor or multi-factor authentication methods.
- The trend of cybercriminals attacking systems without security patches.
- The attack of third parties and supply chains using sophisticated phishing techniques.
- The ability of attackers to scale-up their attacks and how to detect replicated attacks.
- The trend of cybercriminals attacking with the intention of causing damage and losses.
Conclusion
The take away of topics from the RSA conference was vast, but it is clear that cybersecurity took top spot and looks set to keep that position into the foreseeable future.