Each October, the spotlight is placed firmly on cybersecurity awareness as part of a month-long campaign to draw attention to a challenge that CISOs and their teams grapple with daily.
While technology leaders know too well that building a strong security culture through awareness and training requires more than a single month of activities, many also concede that it’s a good opportunity to shine a light on the importance of awareness.
At Lynchpin Media, we marked the month with a number of events – both virtual and in-person – alongside our industry partners. Here’s a round-up of what we did and the key takeaways.
Women in Cybersecurity Breakfast
In South Africa, Intelligent CISO and Check Point Software held a Women in Cybersecurity Breakfast at the Houghton 1938 Estate in Johannesburg.
The event featured discussions on training, threat intelligence sharing and navigating the future of cybersecurity, in addition to a panel discussion with Maryanne Ndanu and Nadia Veeran-Patel, addressing breaking the barriers in cybersecurity.
Attendees shared their experiences and challenges in entering the tech field, focusing on ways to better promote women in cybersecurity. The event concluded with a sit-down breakfast where discussions continued among attendees. They were then treated to a makeup and photoshoot session, a generous gift from Check Point.
This was a unique event which served to address the gender imbalance in cybersecurity and provide an opportunity for women CISOs to connect and collaborate with others in similar roles.
Collaboration with Proofpoint
Our Global Cybersecurity Awareness Month Partner for 2024 was Proofpoint – a company which has long been at the forefront of awareness and training initiatives, and which is helping CISOs to bolster their defences against advanced AI phishing attacks.
During October, Intelligent CISO’s Editor, Mark Bowen, hosted a webinar discussion with Matt Cooke, Director of Cybersecurity Strategy at Proofpoint, to explore topics such as:
- How cyberthreats have evolved and the challenges they currently present to organisations
- How cybercriminals can be kept out of an organisation’s network in the first place
- The best strategies an organisation can employ for effective cybersecurity training
- How CISOs can deploy an effective company-wide, comprehensive cybersecurity strategy
It was an insightful discussion, with Matt sharing advice for those in the audience around how to build a cybersecurity culture.
Reflecting on the discussion, the most important takeaway was that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach for awareness training. Individual employees need to feel empowered to play their part in recognising risks, and this is best achieved via targeted, personalised training.
Intelligent ICT Awards
Lynchpin Media hosted its second Middle East edition of the Intelligent ICT Awards in October, during GITEX Global, and celebrated a number of cybersecurity leaders and vendors who are driving progress. Here’s a round-up of our winners and why they earned the recognition.
Intelligent Secure Software Partner – Darktrace
The winner of this award is a leading provider of cybersecurity AI, helping organisations to prevent, detect, respond to and heal from cyberattacks across the digital estate – cloud, endpoints, network, email, apps, OT and Zero Trust.
Intelligent Secure Digital Transformation Partner – Kyndryl
This organisation is the world’s largest IT infrastructure managed service provider. With a unique approach that supports continuous innovation while maintaining operational excellence, this winner co-creates, innovates and implements solutions with customers to optimise technology investments.
MSSP Partner of the Year – Barracuda Networks
This organisation has made a significant impact on the region’s MSP landscape, driving innovation and supporting partners to thrive in an increasingly complex security environment. This organisation collaborates with leading regional VADs, demonstrating its commitment to local support. Through these partnerships it provides comprehensive training, education and marketing resources to MSPs across the UAE, KSA, Qatar and beyond.
Intelligent Secure Networking Partner – Fortinet
The winner of this award is a vendor that operates with the world’s most powerful networking and security operating system. This vendor’s approach is that of a converged networking and security platform. This convergence enables AI-powered defence of today’s highly dynamic environments while enabling better productivity and user experience.
Intelligent Secure Cloud Partner – Cloudflare
This cybersecurity company is on a mission to help build a better Internet. It provides services that improve the security, performance and reliability of Internet properties so that more people have secure, fast and reliable access to the Internet.
It blocks an average of 117 billion cyberthreats each day for the millions of Internet properties that rely on its protection.
Intelligent Training and Awareness Initiative – Proofpoint
This organisation takes a human-centric approach to ensure increased awareness of cyberthreats, blocking attacks, securing cloud accounts and managing compliance risk. Its solutions provide information on who is attacked, whose behaviour is risky, whose compromised account holds the keys to the kingdom, and who puts data at risk.
Its mission is focused on helping organisations protect their people, and in turn, protect their data, business and reputation.
Intelligent Network Security Implementation – Ajman Transport Authority
As the main body providing public transport service in the city of Ajman, and the regulator for private transport, the winner of this award is highly committed to securing customer information and data.
The organisation has upgraded its network devices and firewall devices with the best and latest technology to ensure the protection and confidentiality of its data and to avoid hacking and ransomware.
Intelligent Software Security Implementation – King’s College Hospital London-UAE
This organisation improved security, performance and useability after migrating its Oracle Health Electronic Health Record to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
The organisation is now providing more than 1,000 concurrent users across its facilities with access to more efficient workflows and improved system performance.
Summary
In summary, here at Intelligent CISO we embraced the opportunity to mark Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
Through collaborations with our industry partners and in-house events, Lynchpin Media is proud to play a role in keeping the security – and wider technology – community informed about latest threats while also helping organisations to build a strong security culture through awareness training.
