NIAS 2018 Highlights

On the 18th of October, the NATO Information Assurance Symposium (NIAS) 2018 closed its conference doors. NIAS is the largest annual NATO cyber security conference. This event is a platform for uniting NATO global government leaders, and security experts across the NATO Alliance, industry, academia, front-line IT staff and product developers to discuss best practices, exchange views and explore innovative cybersecurity solutions.

The main topics this year were:

Bringing Cybersecurity into an operational perspective

Building, fostering and maintaining the cyber workforce

Cybersecurity-aware and resilient applications

Securing the mobile workforce

Cisco has been a long-time NATO industry partner within the NATO Industry Cyber Partnership (NICP) program; collaborating with NATO on education, information and best practice sharing accross cybersecurity topics. This year, Cisco was Gold sponsor, providing a keynote speaker and booth at the conference expo.

Security is foundational at Cisco. Similarly, our message of “Security Above Everything,” resonated across all our key engagements at the conference. Cisco Chief Trust Officer, Anthony Grieco’s keynote addressed the challenge of Managing Risk in a Multicloud World.

Technical workshops by Cisco TALOS European Lead, Martin Lee, provided a report on one of the largest campaigns discovered by the Cisco TALOS Security Research group, impacting SOHO routers from multiple vendors: VPNFilter. VPNFilter’s multi-stage, modular framework has infected hundreds of thousands of network devices worldwide and is now known to possess even greater capabilities, including an expanded ability to exploit endpoint devices from footholds on compromised network devices. Learn more about Cisco TALOS threat intelligence.

Cisco Portugal General Manager, Sofia Tenreiro contributed unique observations and suggestions as part of an industry leadership panel that discussed attracting and building a diverse, talented workforce for the IT cybersecurity and industries.

Cisco also featured prominently in the exposition area, giving demos and showcasing solutions that detect, protect in response to potential cyber threats. This year’s highlights included:

Our mini theater welcomed NATO Alliance delegates and provided information about our Threat Wall, Trustworthy Systems and Cisco TALOS updates on Group 123, targeting South Korea; and GravityRAT, an APT targeting India. We also hosted our friends from Radware who provided an overview of the latest techniques to mitigate DoS attacks.

The Cisco Threat Wall, provided a live view of conference network threat-detection via Cisco Firepower 2100 Next Generation Firewall, Cisco Stealthwatch and Cisco Encrypted Traffic Analytics.

Last, but not least, the Trustworthy Systems Capabilities of the Cisco Firepower 2100 Next Generation Firewall garnered great interest among all.

NATO NIAS was an excellent conference for NATO, Cisco, and all attendees. I eagerly anticipate another excellent conference at NIAS 2019! Our shared trust enables the rapid exchange of threat information. Together we protect NATO’s networks, Cisco’s global customers, and future innovation. Visit trust.cisco.com to learn about how Cisco’s products, services, and analytics make us a global security leader.