Keeping the same direct dialogue style from announcing article “IDC Roadshow 2017 is coming in Bucharest”, I want to ask yesterday participants if all I promised was happen. Did you think my participation invitation arguments have not been confirmed by the event? Anyone is free to complain posting personal opinions on the comments area… What I want, and I consider it more important, is to show those who could not come, what they had to lose…

So, it was 2017 edition of IDC Roadshow, and Bucharest was the 10^th location in CEE region. I don’t know what’s happening in other cities, but I can confirm in Bucharest it was a real show! And here are my key arguments:

First, through the new approach to IT security issues, a field where never-ending novelty is no longer new… We are in a multi-platform era and any CISO should think to data security challenges from duality perspective.  How to improve security posture and resource efficiency at the same time. Data protection is at the same time a management and an IT challenge, covering a lot of vulnerabilities points from access controls and privileged user management, to data encryption and prevention, to policy and compliance deploying, and development of an effective data security culture for the whole company.

Second, the Conference Agenda, which balanced and alternated in a natural way keynotes speeches and new security concepts (Mark Child – CEE Security Practice Lead IDC, Liviu Stoica – president Agency for Romanian Digital Agenda, Gabriel Nicolaescu – Novatech, Puiu Leontescu – Palo Alto Networks, Marian Gheorghe – Telekom)  with discussion panels (CISO perspective: CEC Bank, Omniasig VIG, Dacia Renault and Client and the Vendor: Urgent Targus, Novatech, Palo Alto Networks) , live demo  and two dedicated breakout sessions focusing on of hottest  subject of the moment: The WannaCry Impact for security industry and the new EU regulation 2016/ 679 concerning the personal data privacy (GDPR).

Third, the professional quality of the speakers and discussion panels participants. Personal, for me, it was a very nice surprise to hear and to meet top-level professionals, with long-time and rich expertise in their activity areas like Gabriel Nicolaescu – BDM Novatech, Puiu Leontescu – System Engineer Palo Alto Networks, Cristina Metea – Legal Adviser Microsoft Romania, Catalina Dodu – Country Manager Atos Romania, Adrien Viaod – Field Application Engineer Kingston, Emil Gagala – Network and Security Architect VMware, and Alex Balan – Chief Security Researcher Bitdefender.

Fourth, and somewhat related to the previous one, was the active presence with presentations and especially comments on the personal experience of a very representative CISO & CIO pool, from all essential industries for protecting information, like banking (Razvan Grigorescu – Information Security Manager/ CISO CEC Bank, Cristian Goiceanu – CSO & Executive Director, BCR, and Andrei Vilcan – Head of Information Security, Banca Transilvania),  insurance (Adrian Baciu – CISO Omniasig VIG), manufacturing (Daniel Dinu – CISO Dacia Renault), utilities (Eusebiu Rotaru – IT Infrastructure Manager Electrica Distributie), telecom (Marian Gheorghe – Business Segment ICT and Sales Key Accounts Director Telekom) and logistic services (Marian Pletea – CIO Urgent Cargus), until to the governmental representatives (Liviu Stoica – President. Agency for the Romanian Digital Agenda).

Fifth, the professional involvement of IDC staff, which well managed a very difficult event. I know from my own experience the necessary efforts to better organize such international event. It was a nice surprise for me to note the professional infusion brought by the new team of  IDC Romania, active represented during all-conference by Alina Georgescu – Country Manager and Razvan Savu – Senior Consultant & Senior Research Analyst. Besides the effervescence of the young team, a great value contribution to the event success was conferred by the presence of Mark Child, a regional information security expert with a rich experience in IDC’s research projects since 2004.

So, is not time and space to write here more details about the Roadshow presentations. This will be included in next articles. What I consider important to point here are three moments with large impact for all audience.

The hacking live demo sustained by Senior Information Security Consultants Gabriel Avramescu from Bucharest and Radu Stăneascu from Bruxelles show us how simple is for a hacker to penetrate our computers and to destroy/ steal critical data, by a simple access on a malicious site. It was a very simple technical live demo showing how easy is for any medium experienced hacker to penetrate our systems In the absence of elementary protection measures and cyber security culture.

Another interesting moment was the discussions panel moderated by Razvan Savu from IDC, dedicated to a real case: the business transformation process faced by Urgent Cargus, a former Romanian company acquired by Deutsche Post DHL in 2008.  Operational problems and the challenges caused by the lack of integration of the platforms and systems was the main discussion subjects, and in the same time, the challenging issues opened by Marian Pletea – CIO Urgent Cargus to Gabriel Nicolaescu from Novatech, and Puiu Leontescu from Palo Alto Networks. Both specialists offered their general strategy for the concrete case solving, commented and amended by the Urgent Cargus CIO.

Finally, a few words about a special panel session dedicated to GDPR, moderated by Andreea Lisievici – Data Privacy Lawyer and having as guests Cristina Metea from Microsoft, Catalina Dodu from Atos, and  Cristian Goiceanu – CSO & Executive Director at BCR. As I know it was one of the first UE regulation debate sustained by private company representants, included in a security conference. After a short introduction in the new GDPR regulation made by Andreea Lisievich, participants discussed the vital importance for any company to become compliant with this regulation. Special attention has been given to the new provisions of the regulation that will enter into force on May 25, 2018, and what attitude must be adopted by any company operating with personal data to comply with the new provisions. Other important issue discussed:

• Errors of interpretation that may arise from the current Romanian translation of the Regulation
• What are personal data involved
• Who and How is processing personal data
• Which are the situations a DPO role is necessary?
• Which competencies should a DPO have?
• How important are the data incidents announcements
• When is necessary to announce the citizens about a possible personal data incident?
• How should citizens react when they receive a possible incident notification?
• Which are specific problems for a Cloud services provider?

GDPR is a big challenge for any personal data operating companies. There are a lot of unclear issues related to “What we have to do” action plan. Follow the actions proposed by the GDPR Ready initiative to get answers to the issues raised by personal data processing compliance in real time.

 

Concluding, IDC Security Roadshow, 2017 edition was something new. A new event concept for a very sensitive subject: information security. A well balanced and interesting Agenda. A very high professional level of participants. professional high level. A very representative presence of big companies CISO. A very important contribution to IDC organising team during all the event.

The Digital transformation hurricane is involving a lot of new technologies, opening the Pandora’s Box for a lot of new threats to cyber security. In order to prevent and to limit any vulnerability, important is to know this threat, to manage the associated risks, to develop a company culture for data protection, and to implement a business continuity strategy.