On 10th September, the (ISC)2 North East England Chapter teamed up with Dynamo North East for the second year running to take part in the #CyberFest series of events. The first year of #CyberFest was a significant set of events, but this year was even bigger. Therefore, we were delighted to be a part of it, in particular because we have shared goals around educating and inspiring in cyber security in the North East of England.
We were fortunate enough to have a full house of approximately 50 attendees, which was kindly hosted by EY in their St James’ offices in Newcastle city centre. The chapter recently reached a milestone of 150 members across our region which stretches from as far north as Berwick down to Teesside. Membership remains free, and there is no pre-requisite to hold an (ISC)2 certification. Anyone in the region can join if they work in cyber security.
Phil Jackman opened the evening with an introduction to Dynamo North East, its cyber cluster and background to the annual #CyberFest series of events.
Next up, Connor Carr (from Tombola) delivered a talk on how to setup and run a security champions initiative in an organisation, which was well-received and led to various insightful questions from guests.
This was followed by the usual ‘This Is Me!’ slot whereby a member of the cyber community can stand up and speak about themselves for 15 minutes. This time, Robin Fewster presented his background, experience and current cyber security challenges.
Finally, after a refreshments break in which there was a chance for attendees to do some networking with one another, we were very fortunate to have Paul Vlissidis (from NCC Group and who also impressively leads the Cyber Team in Channel 4’s Hunted series) deliver a talk on open source intelligence and personal security. Again, much discussion was generated by the talk which was evident from the number of questions posed.
Our chapter looks forward to taking part in next year’s #CyberFest event, and we await to see how much bigger that series becomes!
