Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer with the antivirus provider F-Secure, is to give the keynote presentation at this year’s IRISSCERT cyber crime conference in Dublin this November, Siliconrepublic.com has learned.
Hypponen, who is a 20-year veteran of the industry, is frequently quoted in the media and a regular blogger for his company’s site. His presentation is titled ‘Memoirs of a Data Security Street Fighter’ and will cover how we got into the current mess with viruses and malware, as well as suggesting ways to get out.
Organiser Brian Honan said it was a coup to land Hypponen at the conference, which is now in its third year. IRISSCERT is the Irish Reporting and Information Security Service Computer Emergency Response Team, a voluntary group of computer security experts who share information about threats and alerts to the Irish IT community.
A strong lineup of speakers for the day-long event also includes another well-known name from the antivirus world. Rik Ferguson of Trend Micro has 15 years of experience in the field, and is the company’s director of security research and communication, still engaged in threat research focusing on social networking attacks.
The list of speakers is available online. Additional speakers have yet to be announced, and the conference will also include panel discussion sessions. Honan said the group also plans to publish statistics on the types and number of incidents it has dealt with this year.
Also as part of the conference, IRISS will be hosting HackEire, a cyber security challenge where 10 teams will compete against each other in a controlled environment to compromise a typical business network and to be the first to exploit weaknesses in a number of systems and declare victory.
The purpose of the competition is to demonstrate how attackers can gain access to systems. Conference delegates can learn from the event how to prevent similar attacks from impacting their networks.
The event will take place on Thursday, 23 November, at the D4 Berkeley hotel in Dublin. Registration for the event is free, or you can choose to make a donation online.
Photo: Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer with F-Secure
