Cyber Security Summit 2022 – Key Takeaways

It’s been a tough two years with no in-person meet-ups or conferences, and great to get back to normal again. I always say you just can’t replace human interaction fully with technology. I think this is the same for Cyber Security in a way. You can have all the tools and tech, but at the end of the day, you need people coming together to achieve great things.

Kicking things off in the morning, started with a nice walk from Connolly station to GAA headquarters Croke Park. I love coming to this spectacular stadium. The Cyber Security Summit was taking place on the fourth floor of the Hogan stand. Once there, I was greeted by the welcoming staff. The view down to the pitch never ceases to impress. The lobby was full of people chatting and I must say, it was a sight to see. My anxiety promptly left me, and I grabbed a coffee to get started. I quickly got chatting with some familiar faces in the lobby before the first panel discussion started. We all agreed on how good it was to be back meeting each other in the flesh again. I think this was a common theme for the whole room and was a good icebreaker to initiate chats throughout the day.

The morning was filled with various discussions about defending your business from attacks and breaches. The HSE breach was used as a prime example in a lot of the discussions. Some of the common themes were how to have “security by design” being essential to anything you are building, and to bake it in as opposed to bolting on as you grow your business. There were good arguments for this as some businesses, unfortunately, are not positioned to have this and need to secure as they go.

Another good argument was in the instance of an employee falling for a phishing attack, who is to blame? The employee for not being more cyber-savvy, or the employer for not providing sufficient awareness training on phishing attacks. There was a split of opinions on this topic. I believe there is a shared responsibility on all sides to be aware. These attacks are only going to get more sophisticated and more frequent.

After a nice bit of lunch and some networking in the lobby, the much-anticipated round table sessions kicked off. There were quite a few different discussions on offer. I joined the discussion on “The joys of hiring and retaining staff in Cyber Security”, as it was the most relevant to my profession and something I could add some value to.

It was interesting to see the companies that joined for multiple reasons were keen to gain some advice on how to attract or retain talent in their companies. A common pain point that came up time and time again was that they were losing members of the team due to better salaries, and they couldn’t match. It is hard to compete with organisations that are willing to pay above the market rate for cyber talent. I feel it’s important to implement exit interviews to get a comprehensive view of why people are exiting the business and turn that into a strategy to help improve attrition.

There were some other good points made on how to attract talent. Such as, implementing succession plans to help the team feel you’re vested in their future success. Also, having the right culture is key to attracting and retaining the right talent. Some companies will offer a competitive salary, but if the right culture is not in place then it will be very difficult to retain your staff in this market.

I agree with all these viewpoints. That said, I also find that fostering the right leadership and strategy for your security programme is another key factor to retain and attract talent. If you don’t have a clear vision of where your security strategy is going then this will feed into your team and given the extremely competitive market we are in, it will be more challenging to grow your team.

The round table discussions came to an abrupt end and it was 3pm before we knew it. I felt we could have gone on for hours chatting back and forth on this subject. My main takeaway would be that companies are still going to find it difficult to attract and retain talent in this space over the next few years. However, as long as we get out there and keep looking for new ways to find solutions and use out-of-the-box thinking in how to solve these problems, we will get there. The great thing about Ireland is we have an amazing work ethic instilled in our workforce and these meet-ups are testament to show how employers and employees come together and share/solve collectively.

I am looking forward to the next one and hopefully meeting up with some of the people I met there and seeing how things have progressed since.

If you’re interested in a career in Cyber Security or looking for top talent in this area, please feel free to reach out to me for a chat at i.donnelly@masonalexander.ie.