CyberSec Day - an event recap

Nearly 160 participants and 5 hours of hands-on knowledge - that’s the outcome of our brand-new event that we held for Bulgarian private and public sectors. On top of that, we are happy to find out that in our after-event survey, 96% of you said that you were very satisfied with the quality of the presentations. For those of you who couldn’t make it this time, we have prepared a short recap of our event.

CyberSec Day is an event for IT management and cybersecurity which was held by Axence in October as a part of Cybersecurity Awareness Month celebrations. Our goal was to share the best practices on IT security, compliance, and business continuity, tap into the expertise of IT management leaders and learn the latest tactics and methods of protection to secure the IT environment. We wanted to assist our audience in discovering solutions and services that support the successful and secure management of IT networks and stay tuned with the current trends. 

We grouped talks by theme modules so that each of them covered different aspects of IT management and cybersecurity. In each module, we gathered a great speaker lineup - cybersecurity officers, industry experts, government representatives, and leaders from all sorts of businesses of key industries. Our guests could tap into the expertise of Jenny Boneva, Svetlin Iliev, Pavel Georgiev, Jasen Tanev, Miglen Evlogiev, Vladimir Dimitrov, to name a few.

Yavor Yanakiev opening CybeSec Day and presenting the speakers of the day

The event started with the Opening Speech delivered by Miglen Evlogiev - the founder of the Bulgarian Cybersecurity Foundation. According to the expert, most data breaches are the result of phishing. One of the innovations in phishing in the last two or three years is a browser-in-the-browser attack in which JavaScript is used to pop up a window that looks exactly like the login screen with a username and password on a legitimate popular website. He also pointed out that phishing campaign simulations are the best way to train employees.

Miglen Evlogiev providing his Opening Speech on phishing.

The Opening Speech was followed by the Discussion Panel, moderated by Svetlin Iliev from Bulgarian Cybersecurity Association. The experts discussed the current state of IT security, products, legislation, certification schemes, etc. Pavel Georgiev who is the Founder of Cyber Security Talks Bulgaria - an initiative that is holding monthly cybersecurity-themed events and it is building a community of professionals, hacktivists, tech enthusiasts, government representatives, and many more, stated that the advantage of communities is that people belong to a community because they want to.

Experts in the Discussion Panel

The only female expert in the Discussion, Jenny Boneva shared a few very interesting takeaways. She claimed that establishing cybersecurity frameworks is the key part of establishing protection for organizations. She also pointed out that organizations are well-aware about the cybersecurity standards and best practices, however, customizing them is now the most challenging part. The reason for that is that information security is sometimes against the performance so it is important to balance those two functions.

The experience shared by Vladimir Dimitrov, representing the Bulgarian Cybercrime Unit, particularly caught the attention of the participants of the event. He mentioned some real-life cases from his everyday work and how he and his coworkers are dealing with cyber crimes.

Jasen Tanev, on the other hand, was supporting the view that building cyber awareness early on is key for ensuring cybersecurity. In this respect, universities play an important role.

IT Management and Security Module was inaugurated by Marcin Matuszewski, Senior IT Engineer at Axence. He strongly encouraged organizations to create their cybersecurity checklist. Since, it is yet difficult for businesses to completely anticipate and eliminate imminent cyber threats, having a solid cybersecurity checklist might come in handy to strengthen IT networks. This list should include such areas as critical infrastructure monitoring, asset inventory, user monitoring, etc.

Marcin Matuszewski from Axence demonstrating a live malware attack.

The expert particularly pointed out how significant it is to optimize communication with the IT department to handle problems faster and more effectively.

The highlight of Marcin’s presentation was the demonstration of the malware attack which sparked curiosity among the audience.

That was the theory - but how does integrated IT management and security look in practice? The answer to this question was provided by representatives from Euroins. They talked about their challenges and shared their experience of implementing the nVision solution and how the new system has eased their tasks.

Representatives from Euroins sharing their case study.

Data Protection Module was recapping the event. John Bycroft from Comforte AG in a very thought-provoking way touched on the topic of the future of data protection and how it must change to meet new challenges. According to the expert, the solution to the current challenges lies in data-centric security through tokenization, which is already one step ahead of encryption.

John Bycroft talking about data protection.

Apart from tapping into the expertise of IT management and cybersecurity leaders, the guests could take part in networking sessions. They also could visit our company stand and grab some nice gifts.

And of course, you couldn’t be part of our event, without our amazing Partners: https://digitalk.bg/, ECO (European Cybersecurity Organization), Nikrama, Comforte, and Cyber Security Talks Bulgaria.

For the full event coverage, please visit: https://cybersecday.bg/en/