Quiz Our Panel of Experts at April’s Infosecurity Europe RANT Forum Special

There’s a different venue and a new look to this month’s RANT Forum, as the premier talking-shop for Britain’s cyber-security and information-assurance professionals follows the rest of the industry over to west London for the Infosecurity Europe event. In partnership with co-hosts for the night, Trend Micro, RANT founders Acumin are temporarily relocating the lively monthly debate to Earl’s Court, and instead of the usual format of a single speaker presenting their views on a hot IA topic of the day, this month’s RANT will see five leading experts taking part in a free-form discussion session.

The man with the unenviable job of chairing the debate is Duncan Brown, a partner at Pierre Audoin Consultants, where he runs the cyber security research programme: his track record includes extensive experience advising vendors, end-users, regulators and governments on security technology and policy. Just the man for the job of keeping the notorious cadre of RANT hecklers in line, then. “As chairman I’ll just be trying to stop a fight breaking out,” Brown chuckles. “And if it’s a bit tame maybe I’ll put in some devil’s-advocate positioning to spice it up. I suspect it won’t be, though.”

With Infosecurity Europe as the backdrop, and attendees likely to be buzzing with the latest ideas and thoughts from across the IA and cyber spectrum, the line-up of speakers has been assembled with variety and topicality in mind. Going through the speakers “in no particular order,” Brown highlights their specialisms and some of the issues they’re likely to discuss next Wednesday.

Robert Bond, partner and head of data protection and information security, Speechly Bircham
“Robert’s an expert on regulation,” Brown explains, “and I’m sure we will have a question on current and incoming legislation, particularly on data privacy. Both that, and the Cyber Security Directive, will have an impact on the requirements on organisations, in terms of how they store data and how they prove they’re protecting the personal details of individuals. If you’ve got expertise in cyber security, you might actually see this as an opportunity rather than a threat. So there’s a lot to talk about there.”

Martin Jordan, director, information protection team; head, CERT, KPMG UK
“Martin’s highly skilled in penetration testing and doing security audits – he’s very much at the coal face and has built a very successful team doing that,” says Duncan. “So he’ll be quite interested to talk about what the current threat landscape looks like, and how it might evolve with, for example, the Internet of Things. I’ve no doubt that we will talk about Heartbleed, and its origins and impact.”

JD Sherry, vice president: technology and solutions, Trend Micro
“I think JD will be very interested in cloud security,” Brown suggests. “You mention cloud to a lot of people, and they still think, ‘Oh, that’s insecure.’ But I think we’re getting to a point where you can probably buy security via the cloud that can be at least as good if not better than you could reasonably provide yourself. Trend’s got some really interesting capabilities, such as you can get their Deep Secure security technology but pay on a per-use basis. I’m sure we’ll talk about that.”

Amar Singh, chair of ISACA UK Security Advisory Group, independent interim CISO
“Amar’s job is to basically parachute himself into a company in the role of a CISO and gets that organisation into shape,” says Duncan. “He has a lot of practical experience and he’s also quite an interesting character. I’m sure we’ll also talk about the role of the various professional bodies and how they are reacting to the skills shortage, so it will be good to get Amar¹s view on this from the ISACA perspective.”

Plans are also advanced to add an insurance expert to the line-up. “Cyber liability insurance is a really interesting and growing area,” Brown says. “To what extent can companies offset their liability from breaches by taking out insurance policies? It’s a really interesting thing to do, so we want to get an insurer on the panel to make sure we can look at that too.”

Discussion is likely to go on well beyond the standard 45 minutes RANT Forum presentations usually take, and attendees are encouraged to stick around afterwards, avail themselves of the free food and drink on offer,
and chew the fat with this unrivalled panel of experts after the scheduled session ends. So come along on Wednesday, April 30, at the end of Day Two of Infosecurity Europe, and be ready to tackle some of the key issues facing the community in the company of RANT’s typically lively and informed regular crowd.

The venue is O’Neill’s, 326 Earl’s Court Road, London SW5 9BQ (please note that this is for one month only: from May, RANT will be back to its usual haunt in the City). As always, places are going fast. Admission is free,
but you do need to register in advance. If you’ve not already booked, please contact Donna Wreathall, Acumin’s Events Manager, on +44 (0)7585 705 438 or dwreathall@acumin.co.uk