This year’s Cyber Security Festival from Computing, is the first year that it has been held in person and took place earlier in May at Wotton House, Surrey. The event was an intense two-day conference with an excellent array of speakers from industry, research and the Cyber Security community.
I attended last year’s virtual conference, which was very insightful and included a talk from an ex-member of the hacker group Anonymous. This year’s event was just as insightful, with topics ranging from Cyber Risk Quantification, Cyber Insurance, Zero Tolerance, attitudes to the Neurodivergent in Cyber, and the impact of remote working on security.
The conference kicked off with a keynote speech from Charlie McMurdie, with views from a Cyber Crime perspective. It was a fascinating talk and covered arrests and insight Charlie’s vast array of experience.
Charlie McMurdie
Formerly Head of the Police National Cyber Crime Unit and currently Senior Cyber Crime Advisor at PwC.
Charlie McMurdie, former head of the central e-crime unit, at the Metropolitan police. She has joined business consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as its senior crime adviser. Charlie had more than 30 years‘ service in the Metropolitan Police where she set up and led the Police Central e-crime Unit, with the national remit to undertake cyber crime investigations that impact the UK.
Charlie is an acknowledged cyber-crime and security expert who has a proven and highly acclaimed reputation for generating strategic direction and delivery of operational capability to confront the impact of cyber-crime whilst proactively utilising and responding to emerging technologies which fuel it.
Completing almost 32 years‘ service in the Metropolitan Police retiring at the rank of Detective Superintendent, Charlie is an individual who has breadth of vision, innovation and credibility as demonstrated in establishing and building the Police Central e-crime Unit, that is now a world class cyber-crime capability and the national cyber-crime investigative and enforcement body in the United Kingdom.
In addition Charlie is an internationally acclaimed authority and advisor on issues within government and industry in relation to the Internet, communication technology, computing and security sectors and an effective ambassador and negotiator with refined interpersonal and influencing skills who leads for UK policing on a range of strategic programmes and sensitive partnerships with the private sector, and who maintains a unique personal network spanning academia, industry, government, law enforcement, intelligence and security agencies internationally.
The afternoon’s keynote speech was from Ian Hill, who spoke about the ‘Ultimate Threat’ of using Cyber weapons to kill or injure. Although not particularly positive in its outlook, the talk covered a myriad of ways in which real-world harm can be inflicted through Cyber Crime and Warfare.
Clare Patterson
In a panel discussion about improving diversity in Cyber Security, we heard from Kent PhD student Clare Patterson, who is currently conducting research into how organisations learn from cyber incidents for her Cyber Security PhD.
Amanda Niblett
Amanda Niblett, the IT Director of University of East London was also present and took part in the panel discussion on optimising the remote working experience without compromising on security. This was a great insight into some of the things that University of East London are doing in Cyber Security, and it ended up being a heated discussion about Cyber Essentials Plus.
Other topics of discussion included mental health within the context of Cyber Security workers, and the language of Cyber Security and whether the combative vocabulary is fit for purpose.
The conference was a great opportunity to learn from colleagues and get their perspectives on various topics. The conference is running again in 2024, and I hope to be there again.