Tag Archives: event

People often ask me what I talk about these days at the numerous conferences I speak at around the world.

Most of my talks aren’t deep technical dives or analyses of specific cyberattacks. For those, our experts give detailed presentations at specialized events, and publish articles in cybersecurity media. I usually provide a broad overview: discussing what’s happening in the world of cybersecurity, the pressing issues, and where everything’s headed. I almost always have a basis, or template, which I generally adapt for a particular audience or event…

For example, in this post let me share what I discussed at a recent conference of ours in St. Petersburg.

Since the conference was called “Cybersecurity of the Future”, I gave cybersecurity forecasts: what threats we’ll face, and how we’ll tackle them. But before that, as is customary for me, I first gave a brief historical overview of IT-villainy – “from Adam to… Telegram”.

Cybercrime: how did it all start?

So why do we need to dive into the archaeological past and the relics of various malware? Well, because if you don’t know the past, you can’t predict the future. So we look back to events of the past so we can analyze what’s happening here and now and why. Moreover, we’ve been known to be rather good at accurately predicting future cyber-scenarios (more on this below). So let’s roll back around 20-25 years, and remember how the computer mischief of the late 20^th century turned into a whole industry of international crime – and a serious problem for humanity on a whole.

Read on…

Another day – another continent!…

• Country: Brazil.
• City: Rio de Janeiro
• Main business: our regional (the Americas; these days mostly Latin American) partner conference
• Secondary activity: tourisms – of course!…

First up – the partner conference carnival. It wasn’t in Rio city itself, but a bit outside – in a beach suburb; still Rio though. I’d been here a couple of times before, but that was ages ago. The first time was in 2006; the second in 2010 – and on both occasions the reason I was here was for… you won’t will believe it: regional partner conferences!

Back then, I didn’t bother with detailed stories and lots photos (that got started properly in 2011), so I can’t compare today’s experience with that from 19 and 15 years ago, alas.

On the morning of our arrival, with a few hard days’ work ahead, we start out with breakfast looking out onto the South Atlantic Ocean – and a seemingly endless traffic jam:

Read on…

“Busy, busy – as a bee: that’s me!”

Yes, I could have been a poet, but I’ll settle for… globetrotting (partner-)conference-bingeing CEO!…

For yes – you’ve guessed it – I was at yet another partner conference the other week. This came hot on the heels of a real busy schedule in Egypt, after which I was teleported over to the UAE (more precisely, to the small Emirate of Ajman, here) for our annual partner conference for the Middle East and Africa region.

This was our eighth regional conference in… the region (having started in 2017, but we had a few pandemic-related breaks). And how we’ve grown! This time we were joined 110 partners from 67 companies across 20 countries. For some the flight to get there took eight hours, while for others – the local partner – it was just five minutes in a taxi!

Anyway – welcome!…

// And thanks for making just the one typo in the welcome sign :-) ->

I wonder if they had typos over there? ->

Read on…

Hi folks!

…And for us it was hi St. Pete!

But, why does everyone always complain about how gloomy and rainy this city is? Every time I’m there – it’s all bright sunshine and blue skies! ->

We’re still in the thick of our hot season – packed with conferences, expos, meetings, and all kinds of other work-related stuff – plus a ton of travel around the globe. Early last week we wrapped up our global partner conference in Istanbul, while on Wednesday to Friday we had our Kaspersky Future Conference up in St. Petersburg for our major enterprise customers. It was a totally new format for us – we’d never done anything on such a scale before – but it worked out great: zero teething problems, or, as we say in Russia, the first pancake wasn’t a flop!

It all took place in downtown St. Pete, at the Astoria Hotel:

We brought together almost 250 folks from 130+ companies, and there were nearly 30 talks (less than half of which were ours – most came from the guests). I took to the stage too and shared my predictions about the future of cyber-nastiness. Sadly, the outlook’s grim…

But if you’re thorough in setting up the right processes and protocols, you can bring the risk of cyberattacks down to practically zero – and finally get a good night’s sleep :)

On top of that, we ran several workshops on incident investigation and other topics in our field:

During breaks, people mingled in the main area – something like this:

We also picked up some pretty colorful terms from the talks:

• Not just “threats” – but “black swans”
• “Ripe tomatoes”: we all want to be ripe tomatoes, not green ones
• Internal DDoS attack during an antivirus update :)
• Talking to IT is like making a deal with the devil // from the cybersecurity POV
• “Underbelly scanner” :)

It’s clear that information-security folks aren’t exactly popular, for we tend to get in the way of business-as-usual. Hence the rebranding of infosec departments: “Information Security Department”: ISD -> “Idiotic Sabotage Department”! Oh yes – very drole. But!… If you don’t do security (well), it’s only gonna be worse – way worse.

One nice little perk for me: since we’d brought a whole bunch of guests to both attend the conference at the Astoria and stay there too, the hotel management treated me to a luxury suite – (huge thanks to them!) ->

Honestly, I really don’t need such fancy digs, but if they’re offering – why not? And folks often ask me to show off some unique hotels and other lodgings. So here it is – this is what the Rachmaninoff Suite looks like:

Not bad, eh?

Luxurious!

The third room? Half-bar-half-library! ->

Views from the room:

To wrap things up – a shot from one of the restaurants hosting our evening bashes:

That’s it for St. Pete – time to head home! But it won’t be long till I’m back on the road once again!…

One of the main reasons for my recent trip to Turkey was our annual global partner conference, which brought together 100+ business partners from 35 countries – from Chile to Japan. The weather outside was chilly (in Turkey!), but the event itself went off without a hitch!…

Let’s get started!…

Read on…

Hai folks!

The official part of our SAS-2024 conference: done.

Now – the fun part: our esteemed delegates, respected speakers, honorable guests (and I!) continue to enjoy this picture-perfect corner of the island of Bali while they come to their senses – still digesting the mega-doses of first-class cybersecurity content they’ve just received…

As to my (direct) participation in the proceedings (besides watching the speeches), the highlight for sure was my being on stage – not as interviewee, but as interviewer. I can’t recall if I’d ever done such a thing before (if I had it was decades ago). Anyway, it felt like the first time – and early on I was really nervous! Yes – me! But I soon got into the swing of it – no doubt partly due to just how interesting my interviewees were: the Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko and American astronaut Leroy Chiao! We discussed all sorts of cybersecurity issues in space: how they duplicate the comms channels on the International Space Station, who’s responsible for installing updates, what happens if an incident occurs, and lots more besides…

Read on…

Hi folks – from Indonesia, where we’re holding our yearly international cybersecurity conference SAS – the Security Analyst Summit.

Dozens of cybersecurity events take place around the world every year, but ours has its own special format – its own special work-hard-play-hard ethic, and it’s always by the sea in a tropical clime. It attracts leading analysts and researchers of the most complex cyberattacks, and this year we’re in Bali ->

Read on…

Hi all!

As per my chokka, ongoing business-trip schedule, I recently found myself down in Sochi where we had our 12^th conference dedicated to industrial cybersecurity. Every year the industrial topic gets all the more popular, while our exhibition gets all the more large. Nearly 450 guests were in attendance this time – meaning we wouldn’t have all fitted into last year’s venue; accordingly, the view out the window was a little different to the usual one:

I kicked things off to a packed hall (just how I like it) ->

Read on…

Now for a quick review of my recent business trip to Tianjin, China…

The first thing that came to mind when we reached downtown was: “Where are all the millions of Chinese folks that I’ve been told live here?” For the mentioned downtown sure seemed rather deserted empty for a city of 14 million – just as it did on my previous trips to the city (2012, 2019)…

The internet and my other senses tell me this city is far from an uninteresting place to live. People have called the banks of the river here home since ancient times, which makes sense given its climate. But then the Chinese emperors moved the capital north to Beijing (I still don’t understand why), which in Chinese literally means “Northern Capital” – 北 běi for north and 京 jīng for capital.

The migration of the imperial capital north and subsequent prospering of Tianjin happened (if we believe unverified sources) around 600 years ago (see here), and the city turned into a southern port for the capital, which I’ll show photos of a little later. This was the first time these river backwaters got lucky. Then for centuries Tianjin was a major transit point from the southern provinces to the capital, and from the capital and back.

Read on…

I’ve a great many different hobbies and favorite activities – just like anyone. But one of the more unorthodox is long-distance beach-walking. What that?! Easy: Take any sandy beach – and stomp along it barefoot for as long as possible…

Does that include walking back all the way barefoot too? It does indeed. And I’ve never needed alternative options, which are, btw: (i) take a cab; (ii) take a taxi-boat by sea; and 3) be carried in/on some kinda carriage by porters (no WAY!)!

As regards some of the folks who may want to join me on such a barefoot beach-hike, I often have to feel sorry for them! Like I did recently in the Dominican Republic where we had our regional (North, Central and South America) partner conference: in-between work some colleagues joined me…

So we headed on down to the beach, looked left – not much happening down there, and then right – and decided that was the better option. The main reason: there was a tangible destination > that far end of the beach (with the trees behind it) where it seems to just end. Endpoint decided, off we popped…

Read on…