Upcoming RANT Forum to focus on communication and collaboration

Last month’s RANT Forum was one of the best attended so far, and saw Sarb Sembhi, director of IncomingThought, present on EU Data Protection Regulation.

This month’s event will be held at The Counting House, London on Wednesday August 28th 2013 and is set to be just as interesting, with a new speaker and an engaging topic.

Darren Hodder, vice-president of cyber fraud intelligence at the Centre for Strategic Cyberspace & Security Science, will give a talk about just how important the crossover between information security and anti-fraud is, entitled ‘Different Disciplines, Same Goals: Where is the Communication & Collaboration?’.

Mr Hodder has attended RANT previously and was surprised to find he did not know many of the attendees personally, especially considering he is so well connected and spoken at numerous industry events.

“Perhaps we need to get better at communication, rather ironic since our disciplines facilitate global communication on an unprecedented scale! In order to be better understood by the board we need to get back to what is at the heart of all the problems we are trying to solve and in my view it is all about people.”

He believes IT security professionals can get so caught up in the latest technical trends and challenges that they may forget there is always a human behind these threats and that technology is simply a facilitator for age-old crimes and scams.

Mr Hodder wants IT professionals to get to know one another better in order to reach their overall goals more effectively.

RANT is certainly the perfect location for this subject as the event encourages interaction and engagement by making the whole thing a little less formal.

The idea of the event  is to put people at ease so that key issues can really be explored in an open forum. It gives a great opportunity for people to network and get to know each other, something Mr Hodder would like to see more of in the coming months.

There are many threats facing the IT security industry and many of these will be discussed at the next RANT Forum on August 28th.

What are the biggest challenges when sourcing information security professionals?

During each RANT forum and conference information security professionals gather together to talk about some of the most pressing issues in the industry.

One of the topics that often gets brought up is recruitment and how organisations in both the public and private sector go about bringing in the most talented individuals.

During the latest conference, some of the industry’s top professionals gave an insight into what they thought about the process and how it has evolved over the years. We asked them what they perceived as the biggest challenges when sourcing information security professionals.

Tom Salkield, professional services director at Integralis, said: “We need to attract more people into this industry sector … there are some big problems that we actually need to solve.”

According to Mr Salkield the industry must integrate more with the education system to get people interested in IT security.

“We need to be working much more closely with schools, colleges and universities to entice the new leaders of the future to come and enjoy the big debate we’re involved in,” he added.

Many other professionals gave their opinions on the industry and their thoughts on the matter can be seen in the video below.

For example, Javvad Malik, senior analyst at 451 Enterprise, believes it’s about more than just the technical skills that are required, he thinks it’s also about personalities and “people who can fit into the mould”.

The stereotype of having information security professionals all come from hacking origins is now gone and individuals are constantly emerging from a range of backgrounds and this diversity can only be a good thing.

Acumin has been hosting the monthly RANT events for the last seven years and encourages everyone to get involved with the discussion and lively debate.

Each forum and conference sees hundreds of information security professionals join in and share their ideas on the future of this ever-growing industry.

Attending RANT is a great way to broaden your thoughts and expand your network and the next event will be held on August 28th in London.