Agile business models require agile security measures
This was the title of GObugfree Co-Founder and Chief Hacking Officer Michael Schläpfer's Best Practice Speech at the Swiss Cyber Security Days 2022 (SCSD). The balance of the conference also clearly shows that Switzerland is in a race to catch up in the area of cyber security and new security approaches are required.
The fourth Swiss Cyber Security Days 2022 (SCSD) brought together the most important decision-makers and experts in the field of cyber security at national and international level on Wednesday, 6 and Thursday, 7 April. Around 2,000 visitors and 100 exhibitors attended the two-day event in Freiburg. As a gold sponsor, GObugfree was also present with an event booth team and represented in the Best Practice Track by Co-Founder and Chief Hacking Officer Michael Schläpfer.
The increase in infrastructures and data transfer volumes lead to ever greater vulnerabilities
On the first day of the Swiss Cyber Security Days, global security issues were discussed. National Councilor and President of the SCSD Doris Fiala and Daniel Berger, President of Cyber Resilience Ltd, already pointed out the increase in cyber risks at the opening ceremony, which were accelerated by the pandemic. Companies and administrations are confronted with and threatened by cybercrime on a daily basis.
The presentation by Chris Inglis, National Cyber Director and Advisor to the President of the United States Joe Biden, was one of the highlights. He spoke in favor of intensifying international cooperation, as cyberspace knows no national borders. Florian Schütz, the Confederation's delegate for cyber security, looked back on the developments and progress of recent years and Switzerland's potential in this context. Divisional Commander Alan Vuitel, head of the Armed Forces Cyber Command project, talked about cyber security from a military perspective.
Every third company has already been the victim of a cyber attack
This is shown by a current GFS study, which was discussed in a panel of the insurance company Mobiliar by Susanne Maurer, Editor Corporate Communication, Andreas Hölzli, Head of Competence Center Cyber Risk, and Thomas Kühne, CIO. As on the second day, the focus of the event was on cyber security for SMEs. This was also the starting point for the presentation by Michael Schläpfer, Co-Founder and Chief Hacking Officer, as part of the Best Practice Track. He showed that the rapid digital transformation and constant new developments in companies are creating serious security gaps that require new agile security methods. For example, implementation errors and misconfigurations can open doors for cyber criminals. Using exciting examples, he showed how this can look in practice and how Bug Bounty Programs can help here to identify vulnerabilities early and proactively, fix them and restore a company's security. In particular, cooperation with a creative and experienced community of trusted friendly hackers can reveal security risks before they are exploited by cyber criminals
Unlike vulnerability scanners and other automatic application security testing methods, ethical hackers score with their creativity and provide outside-of-the-box security testing.
Overall, the Swiss Cyber Security Days 2022 were a great success and the GObugfree team would like to thank everyone for all the valuable discussions and contacts. The Swiss Cyber Security Days 2023 will take place on 29 and 30 March.
Click here for the official press release of the SCSD: swisscybersecuritydays.ch