Vincent Villers, associate and Cybersecurity Leader at PwC Luxembourg; Credit: PwC Luxembourg

The second edition of the PwC Cybersecurity Day in Luxembourg brought together around 200 IT security professionals from the private and public sector, international experts, investors and technology companies.

Taking place in the context of Cybersecurity Week, this year’s PwC Cybersecurity Day, like its predecessor, highlighted the importance of collaboration between the private and public sectors in the fight against cybercrime in Europe and beyond.

While the event brought together a diverse range of cybersecurity experts to share the latest global trends in the field, the Internet of Things (IoT) was the focus of the second PwC Cybersecurity Day, which looked especially at how to secure the more than 20 billion connected objects to be present by 2022.

According to Mourad Yesayan of Paladin Capital (Washington D.C.), the world is becoming increasingly digitised with IoT creating many digital platforms and opening up unparalleled economic horizons but also new threats. In fact, the intervention of Povilas Zinys from Luxtrust and Robert Spicer CEO of vyzVoice showed the audience that only 20% of IoT applications today are subject to tests to check for vulnerabilities, raising concerns about their security. Again collaboration was proposed as the required solution.

The conference also addressed the lack of talent to address Cybersecurity challenges as Europe is missing one million engineers needed to address the issue, according to figures from the European Cyber ​​Security Organization (ECSO).

Moreover, the PwC Cybersecurity Day this year again allowed 10 companies from Europe, the US and Israel to stage their innovative technological solution. At the end of the day, the most promising company prize was awarded to the Austrian company Cyber ​​Trap offering a solution capable of trapping hackers through fake accounts or files. Likewise, Stratus was awarded the Public Assistant Award at the event, with the US company putting forward an interface that allows users to be the only ones able to access environments (such as servers for example) for a specified period.

Finally, as American analyst Graham Cluley reminded the audience in his speech, whilst companies worldwide are accelerating their digital transformation by using new technologies and Big Data to innovate and develop their growth, they are becoming increasingly dependent on virtual resources, learning each day to better recognize, manage and anticipate the associated risks.