Security in 2020? Anton Chuvakin will give you the broad overview!

The broader picture a the conference will be given by a well known person in this field. He will talk about “Security 2020” This is Dr. Anton Chuvakin, and he is a Research Director at Gartner’s Gartner for Technical Professionals (GTP) Security and Risk Management Strategies team in his day job.
Anton is a recognized security expert in the field of log management, SIEM and PCI DSS compliance. He is an author of books “Security Warrior” and “PCI Compliance” and a contributor to “Know Your Enemy II”, “Information Security Management Handbook” and others. Anton has published dozens of papers on log management, SIEM, correlation, security data analysis, PCI DSS, security management. His blog “Security Warrior” is one of the most popular in the industry.

Tell us Anton, why did you become a security expert?

Few people I met in the industry have a noble answer to that question, such as “to protect the world from evil computer criminals”, or something. I think for most people the more important question is “how” not “why.” So, in my case, I started helping with Linux system administration back in my graduate student years - and I immediately discovered that the machines that I was supposed to help with were already compromised and had IRC bots running on them. That pretty much started my interest in security – I started reading books and online resources. Soon, I was sharing my experiences and writing papers about fighting the attackers at a small ISP. That pretty much became a passion and the career.

And what will you talk about?

Since I am giving a keynote, I will talk about everything :-). But in particular, I will talk about the future. I will try to create a framework for understanding how information security will look in, say, 2020 and possibly even beyond. I would invite my audience to explore that world of that possible future and see what we need to do now to prepare for it.

What do you love the most being a security expert?

Change! The world of information security changes all the time as technologies and attacks change. Admittedly, you are more likely to find a Windows NT 4.0 machine than a private cloud at many large organizations, so quite a few things that should change don’t really change. Still, information security is an exciting domain because of its ever-changing nature, which nearly guarantees you’ll never be bored.

So further on, what do you think the future security threats will be like?

I will defer that question to my presentation, to make it more fun!

OK, nice one. But what is your best tip then for security professionals today?

To protect the ever-changing IT landscape, you must keep your deep technical knowledge current and constantly learn about the technologies at tax vulnerabilities as well as about new uses of information for business and other purposes. A security professional simple cannot “fall into the rut” and stay in the comfort zone of what he already knows – he will become useless fairly soon. Constant learning without stopping for a second is your best tip.

And why should people come to the upcoming (and awesome) HP workshop in Dubai?

Honeynet Project workshops (and I remember my first one at Lance’s house in 2003 or so) is a very special type of an event where you can learn (from presentations as well as hands on) from the people who are at the very top of their fields (be is visualization, forensics or malware reversing).

Thanks Anton for your time, and looking forward seeing you again on the workshop! It will be another interesting and great workshop (IMHO at least.. )! There are still some tickets left! Check the schedule here and join us in Dubai 10-12th of February!