Borderless Cyber Europe 2016 to Emphasize the Importance of Threat Intelligence Sharing

On 8-9 September, OASIS will host Borderless Cyber Europe 2016 at the European Commission Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

The excitement for this year’s event has been growing since OASIS first launched its Borderless Cyber brand last year in Washington, DC.

Dr. Robert W. Griffin, chief security architect at RSA, isn’t surprised. For him, such anticipation naturally accompanies the reputation OASIS has built for itself in the advancement of open standards for information society:

“At OASIS’s 2015 event, Pierre Guislain, Senior Director at the World Bank, praised OASIS for bringing together security professionals and encouraging them to collaborate. OASIS has accomplished more than most other standards organization in operation today. Its worldwide forum for key technical issues is unmatched.”

After dedicating last year’s conference to a discussion of the types of threats information security personnel face worldwide, OASIS is using this year’s event to strike up a conversation on the digital threats confronting Europe in particular.

Those threats know no boundaries, as Freddy Dezeure, head of CERT-EU, is right to point out.

“Europe’s main digital threats aren’t limited to a specific country or member state. Criminals want to extort victims for encrypted data, steal money or information, and disrupt services wherever they can. Those threats extend across borders, sectors, companies, and countries.”

The same can also be said for those networks linking individual threat actors in Europe together.

We in the security industry might like to believe that attackers operate in a dog-eat-dog world. But that’s simply not the case. They are more than willing to exchange information. It just needs to be under the right circumstances.

“Digital threats have moved sophisticated attacks techniques down into the realm of organized crime,” observes Peter Allor, a security strategist at IBM. “Whether by purchasing others’ tools or simply by telling one another, computer criminals are constantly sharing information with one another about how threats work and how they can modify a technique to accomplish a specific purpose.”

In the process, they are also contributing to the collective threat intelligence knowledgebase, which empowers every bad actor to conduct more sophisticated attacks in the future.

Given the speed and extent to which attackers are exchanging information and refining their tactics, security personnel are under a great deal of pressure to keep pace with emerging threats.

That process has proven to be a challenge thus far.

“Those in managerial roles who innovate policies, identify risks, and assign budget dollars often do not maintain working relationships with those who do security,” Allor notes. “That may have worked long ago, but it won’t against today’s threats. Both groups need to understand that they can work together and share information with others. We just need a way to help them do so easily, consistently, and in a uniform way.”

That’s where Borderless Cyber Europe 2016 comes in.

Designed to be smaller in size than other leading industry events, this year’s upcoming conference will leverage its high information content and high interaction format to each participant’s benefit.

All who attend Borderless Cyber Europe 2016 will have the opportunity to talk to their peers about real-life problems, to see that verticals are already served by existing tools, and to get some training if they are technically inclined.

Laurent Liscia, CEO of OASIS, hopes these experiences will help participants realize they do have a voice in the creation of standards and tools. Per his explanation:

“As software continues to eat up the world, many businesses are becoming software-driven and realizing that current standards/open-source packages do not meet their particular business requirements. But that doesn’t have to be the case. At Borderless Cyber Europe, we want to encourage companies to share their needs with open-source and open standards communities. Everyone is welcome to change the tools and make a difference in the way things are managed.”

If more people participate, that will ultimately make everyone safer–a point with which Jamie Clark, a senior executive and General Counsel of OASIS, could not agree more.

“Borderless Cyber Europe 2016 is about herd immunity. We have all realized there’s no way for governments and organizations to successfully build a wall that keeps the figurative villagers in and the figurative tigers out. There’s simply too much going on every day. But if people all around the world up their game, it benefits each and every community. We are all one herd, so the level of herd immunity cultivated in each organization and government benefits us all.”

Please help make the world a safer place by registering to attend Borderless Cyber Europe 2016!

For more information on this year’s event, please click here.