By Nancy Doniger
Learn prevention strategies at North East Annual Cybersecurity Summit
Google, FaceBook, Target, Yahoo, eBay, Equifax. Cyber crime has targeted all of them. They are just a handful of the growing list of large companies that have suffered a major security breach. Small companies are even more vulnerable. The threat keeps growing as hackers wrack up successes and learn new devious tricks.
Lack of awareness of the devastating effects of a security breach to a company’s bottom line — and how to prevent it — led Pamela Gupta, cybersecurity leader and founder of OutSecure Inc., to initiate a summit of expert speakers address all known threats and offer practical solutions to protect companies’ intellectual property along with customer data.
Connecticut business leaders are urged to attend the sixth North East Annual Cybersecurity Summit (NEACS) on Monday, Oct. 15 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Trumbull Marriott, 180 Hawley Lane Trumbull to learn how to protect their most valuable assets.
“I realized the biggest issue was awareness, with many business leaders referring cyber security to the IT department,” Gupta said. “I wanted to create a forum for business leaders. Most conferences with a security focus reach out to the security community for the latest trends but not to the business community. I wanted to close the gap.”
NEACS is the result of that initiative. Formerly named the Annual Connecticut Business Security Summit, NEACS will connect attendees with leading subject matter experts in security, privacy, and risk management. They will provide insights on current cybersecurity risks and threats, as well as business and technology strategies to protect against and respond to cyber-attacks, data breaches, and fraud.
“This dynamic event is carefully crafted to deepen our collective understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing boardrooms, business leaders, security leaders and technologists today and in our future,” Gupta said. “There will be high-impact sessions on a broad range of topics.”
NEACS 2018 is presented by a coalition of local chapters from renowned international associations for audit and security professionals. Members pay $175 admission, and non-members pay $225 for the daylong conference. You can register for the conference here.
OutSecure
Drawing upon a unique combination of more than 20 years of technical, process, policy, and business experience, Gupta founded OutSecure Inc. 10 years ago. The company provides consulting to public and private sector clients in the areas of privacy, security, cyber crime, breach management, and cyber strategy.
“OutSecure works to identify what makes a company attractive for a breach, what hackers can monetize and what effect a disruption causes for the bottom line,” Gupta said. “Boards and management of more mature operations do get it that cybersecurity is a business issue, but they don’t have a good enough understanding to create right security strategy or approach. We help with that.”
OutSecure creates strategic cyber programs for 500 companies to address information protection risks unique to their environment. Services include assistance to boards and senior management, security risk assessments, global compliance reviews, security in design of applications and products and defining mature security programs and strategy.
Gupta said “Cybersecurity is a complex area that spans infrastructure, lines of business, supply chain, etc., so even for companies with a robust security team, it’s easy to miss the alignment with business to truly ensure critical assets of a company are protected. We provide that holistic third-party threat and risk assessment, which can be vital for risk mitigation as well as reduce the cost for securing.”
