CLOUDSEC holds internet security conference in Manila

The event was open to various IT professionals and its aim was to educate and empower individuals to become highly qualified cyberdefenders. Image CLOUDSEC

CLOUDSEC, a global community for cyber-security experts and professionals, held its global internet security conference in Manila for the first time on Tuesday. Its main theme was to empower users against cyber-threats through cybersecurity awareness.

The conference moves through various countries and will be stopping by China, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Australia, UK and Korea later this year. Having been held in the Philippines for the first time this year called to light the country’s vulnerability to digital attacks.

Paul Serrano, Chief Evangelist from NUTANIX INC. leads the talk on Security Implications for the Enterprise Cloud (Hybrid Cloud). Image INQUIRER.net

International and local cybersecurity experts converged in Manila to hold talks on topics such as leveraging host-based security, state of web defacements, hacktivism and the art of (cyber)war.

Apart from the scheduled talks, participants could visit booths set up by other companies for more information about the security solutions that they offer. Image INQUIRER.net

The various talks were spearheaded by representatives of companies like Schneider Electric, Qualys, Amazon Web Services, VMWare, NUTANIX, SANS and, of course, Trend Micro. This is possible because despite being sponsored by Trend Micro, the company wants the event to be as brand-neutral as possible to allow for greater dissemination of information and education about cybersecurity as well as the threats that they constantly battle.

Raimund Genes, Trend Micro Global CTO discusses how five minutes is all it takes to unleash a plethora of problems within a compromised system. Image INQUIRER.net

In a press briefing, Trend Micro Global CTO Raimund Genes reiterated that cybersecurity is all about the people and how they utilize the tools as well as solutions being provided to them. He is advocating the placement of government policies to urge companies to be more proactive in laying down security layers to protect sensitive information from cyber-attacks.

Genes also noted that the Manila leg of the conference showed the “hunger” for knowledge that the participants had with regards to cybersecurity.

He said, “You need to have the right people on your team. The strategy needs people and teams. All the best strategies and technologies are moot without people.”

According to Trend Micro data, cyber-attacks could severely impact systems and users in as little as five minutes. Five minutes is also enough to unleash up to 1,800 new threats and expose systems to over 800,000 malicious URLs, malware and spam email.

Prevention is the best defense against cyber-attacks and having people educated about cybersecurity is the way to make this happen.  Alfred Bayle