Trend Micro Philippines has opened its annual Decode cybersecurity conference with about 3,000 Filipino IT professionals from across the country and the globe last November 10, 11, and 12. 

Like many major conferences across the world, the Decode 2020 turned to a virtual conference—doubling the number of sessions, more international experts who are convening discussions, and customized networking activities that are providing more learning and training opportunities for modern-day ‘cyber-defenders’ who must elevate their knowledge and skills to facilitate their organizations’ transformation in the most rapid, seamless, and secure way possible. 

With the theme ‘Elevate: Transform Rapidly, Seamlessly, Securely,’ the interactive cyber-security conference is facilitating six keynotes, 33 breakout sessions, two plenary sessions, and one panel discussion. 

Keynote and plenary sessions 

In the keynotes, Trend Micro Forward-Looking Threat Research (FTR) Senior Director Martin Roesler will discuss how the pandemic is changing the world, while Trend Micro Director of Technology Marketing Myla Pilao will share a guide on how to distinguish innovation from disruption. Trend Micro FTR Director for Cybercrime Research Robert McArdle will talk about cybercrime in 2020 and beyond. 

Other keynote speakers are Melissa Hathaway, who served as cybersecurity advisor to two US Presidents, she will discuss threats to digital infrastructures; SyCip Gorres Velayo & Co Technology Principal Philip Casanova, who will talk about the principles for cybersecurity leaders; and Interpol Director of Cybercrime Craig Jones, who will tackle the translation of cybercrime for law enforcement and private partnerships. 

Two plenary sessions will cap each day. Trend Micro Director of Managed XDR Jay Yaneza will facilitate the discussion about how threat actors move on Day 1, while Alexandru Caciuloiu, Cybercrime Project Coordinator at the Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), will preside the session about darknet and other cybercrime threats in the region. A panel discussion will conclude the conference on Day 3 with three of the keynote speakers—McArdle, Jones, and Casanova. 

The breakout sessions 

The 33 tracks or breakout sessions are categorized into four clusters. No More Secrets comprise of sessions focusing on securing privacy and identity as well as compliance. Some of the sought-after sessions cover the risks of open banking, digital privacy and public security, and personal data protection amid the new normal.  

Business Unusual sessions focus on cybercrime, vulnerabilities, and emerging and/or future threats. Among the main issues to be analyzed are cyberespionage, deserialization vulnerabilities, use-after-free and remote code executions, hardware reversals, cyberthreat intelligence, OSS in IoT, edge computing, and insider threat.

The Digital Frontier breakout tracks are all about AI, ML, IoT, IloT, and Cloud. Among the covered topics are security for cluster, serverless cloud architectures, cyberattack trends in the cloud, the USBee malware, machine learning in cybersecurity, and phases of data science process. 

Lastly, Securing the Security Landscape sessions will decode forensics, investigations, and intelligence and response. The invited experts will talk about the risks of industrial automation programming, removal of the backdoor in backdoor shell, the current threat hunting process, scalable malware clustering, factory honeypot, curbing phishing attacks, current ransomware, and threats to ICS/SCADA endpoints. 

Other virtual activities

Aside from the information-packed sessions and plenaries, Decode 2020 is facilitating a side-track each day, which are designed to kick-in the scheduled sessions. Those will put the spotlight on women in tech, skill-building, and student learning sessions. 

New features are being introduced like the virtual booths, virtual lounge, wherein participants can do networking via chat boxes during breaks. Trend Micro is also giving away premium merchandise items in a raffle. Moreover, registered participants automatically earn access to important discussion rooms and playback features so they can review the sessions for a year. 

To learn more about Decode 2020, visit https://decodeph.com/.