It was an action-packed day for the CyNam team and our community as we headed to the DRPG studios in Worcester to deliver our very first, socially distanced virtual event – CyNam 20.2 – The Changing Scene of Cyber. Going virtual meant that an opportunity arose to engage with the wider community outside of Cheltenham, which was a goal from the outset.
During these uncertain times, the topic “The Changing Scene of Cyber” spurred on a remarkable set of conversations from industry thought leaders around a range of topics pertaining to the current climate and the impact it has had on cybersecurity, not only for businesses but for opportunities in our field in terms of education, public sector and innovation.
With over 800 attendees joining the event, it was clear that this topic was front of mind for you, the cyber community.
Kicking off the event was an interesting panel discussion provided by Saj Huq, Programme Director at LORCA with fellow panellists’ Dr Godfrey Gaston, Executive Director of CSIT and Co-Founder of Global Epic and Stephen Wray – Director and Cyber Lead at Deloitte UK.
Innovation was the hot topic for this panel; delving into questions regarding the cyber “innovation ecosystem”, how start-ups can respond to the key challenges for their customers and how start-ups can become value creators and scale up internationally. The discussion also covered how academia and the government can also support innovation by providing support and resources to start-ups.
Next on the line-up was Kevin Nicholas, Government Senior Partner from Capita, who shared an insightful talk regarding the zeitgeist topic of data and ethics. Drawing from examples of the Singapore state data system and its use of data in the prevention of the spread of Coronavirus, Kevin addressed the debate around data surveillance and the collection of data, and broaching key topics such as what are the ethics of NOT gathering data and should we put more trust in the government when it comes to collecting data for the greater good?
It was then time for the Cyber Showcase panel with contributions from two excellent cyber start-ups Trust Stamp and Bitweave.
The key aim behind the Cyber Showcase is to give the cyber community an insight into the great innovative work being done in the sector by up and coming businesses.
Gareth Genner, CEO of Trust Stamp outlined how they are solving the problem of when biometric data gets lost and how Trust Stamp’s solution prevents reverse engineering to get to the original biometric data. He also shared how Trust Stamp is expanding outside of the fintech space into NGOs and hospitality.
Nick Leaver, CEO of Bitweave shared how they build big data analysis platforms to aid cybersecurity operations. Bitweave have overcome customer issues with the collection of big data including challenges between the data sets, data that’s difficult to analyse and trustworthiness of the data. Nick then shared how Bitweave can help mitigate or solve these problems using cloud, machine learning and containerisation.
Nick Sturge from Cyber Central and Madeline Howard from CyberFirst then took the stage.
Nick sharing the compelling proposition of the Golden Valley Development, a utopian vision of a new Cheltenham based cyber park with the scope to be a national cyber centre of excellence.
Madeline shared the work she has been undertaking interacting and engaging with schools and colleges, specifically in line with the important topic of inclusion and diversity and how to make the cyber security industry accessible and achievable for all.
We rounded up the event with a live Q&A panel which covered a raft of topics ranging from trust by design, understanding and knowing your mission as cyber security company, and culture.
For the full event experience, the CyNam 20.2 broadcast is now available on the CyNam YouTube channel – which you can access here.
