Infosecurity Europe 2024 Keynotes: Top 5 Cybersecurity Themes Shaping the Industry

From the ever-present threat of ransomware to the growing vulnerability of interconnected businesses, Infosecurity Europe 2024's Keynote conference served as a pulse check for the cybersecurity community.

Leading cybersecurity professionals came together from a wide range of organisations across several industries to share their experiences and expertise with an audience hungry to learn.

Here are the top five cybersecurity themes to come out of Infosecurity Europe 2024’s Keynote conference programme. 

Deepfake audio and video content is a big issue for cybersecurity professionals as they tackle imitations of company leaders trying to scam employees out of money and information.

Meanwhile, deepfake content has already been spread in political campaigns, posing a threat to democracy.

During the opening keynote talk, deepfake/generative AI expert Henry Adjer warned that if regulation surrounding generative AI and deepfakes is not agreed upon internationally we could see the emergence of “AI tax havens”.

These havens may emerge where countries intentionally do not put in place legislation in order to attract investment from technology firms. However, this could lead to irresponsible products being built which go on to have a major global impact.

He noted how deepfake detection continues to lag and false positives and negatives are still a problem.

A more sophisticated solution to the challenge of deepfakes is “content provenance” – cryptographically secured metadata that is attached to media the moment it’s captured on a device or generated using an algorithm.

This could go some way to tackle the deepfake issue, which could have major implications for democracy.

Generative AI and AI tools are being rapidly adopted by organisations worldwide and this poses unknown risks to many.

During Infosecurity Europe 2024, experts urged organisations to stick to risk management basics if they want to ensure AI is used safely and securely. This includes developing well-written policies, training and clear accountability.

Training programmes ought to be updated so that they include elements of using AI responsibly and safely within the business.

“There’s going to have to be some sort of awareness training to get the most effective use out of [GenAI] because if you ask it a question in the wrong way, you’ll not necessarily get the right answer,” said Blockmoor director of information and cybersecurity, Ian Hill.

Data quality and governance should also be considered as both provide a key but often under-appreciated foundation for safe, secure and optimised use of AI.

There is a need for a strong dataset that is verified for AI models to be developed on. Some of the key data models that some AI is being built on are not “as good as they’re cracked up to be,” argued University College London (UCL) CISO, Sarah Lawson.   

The biggest cyber threat to organisations today is ransomware. During Infosecurity Europe, experts described how ransomware is increasingly targeting smaller businesses and the supply chains of all organisations.

Typically, firms continue to fall victim to phishing and social engineering attacks as an initial access vector, which they do not have complete systems in place to prevent.

Therefore, established ransomware protection measures are important and continue to be effective, despite a surge in attacks.

City of London Police Inspector Charlie Morrison flagged up a 10% increase in the number of attacks based on ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS), where it was possible to detect the ransomware strain.

RaaS is a business model used by attackers where affiliates with different skillsets are used to conduct a single attack.

Meanwhile, the debate on whether to pay or not to pay a ransom demand continues among those in the sector.

In one keynote session, Detective Superintended Paul Peters, who is also the director of the Cyber Resilience Centre for Wales, said that mandatory reporting would help to plug a gap in ransomware awareness among law enforcers and government agencies.

However, Gareth Bateman, cyber growth lead at Marsh UK, urged caution, stating that a law on mandatory reporting in France had caused a lot of confusion among businesses as to what the various thresholds are and what you have to report. 

A leading data protection lawyer claimed that there are currently over 100 pieces of pending or existing EU legislation, all of which define cybersecurity differently.

Ropes & Gray partner, Rohan Massey, said that one of the key challenges facing organisations in this context is to understand what exactly is being regulated.

The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and Network and Information Systems Directive (NIS 2) are two major pieces of EU legislation that are to come into effect in the near future.

Massey explained that organisations should consider three main elements when approaching new legislation: accountability and governance; supply chain risk; and risk management. 

Even organisations that have a mature cybersecurity posture are not impenetrable, as attackers frequently target firms within a business supply chain.

These supply chain attacks can have devastating consequences, as shown when an attack on a pathology service provider cripped hospital services in London in June 2024.

Therefore, CISOs need to work both with suppliers and partners, and other business departments, to identify and minimise risks from the supply chain.

One challenge facing cyber teams is the sheer scale of suppliers used by many organisations. With a sprawling network of suppliers, it can be useful to classify them by their importance and potential risk.

“We have about 24,000 suppliers but some of those will be an individual coming in to put fence posts around the fields. We are less worried about those,” Jon Townsend, CIO at the National Trust said. “But we categorise them into tiers and say these are our ‘tier one’ suppliers. It doesn’t matter what business functionality they are providing; you need to understand the business criticality of what they do.”

Supply chain management requires continuous review as security teams need to ensure their suppliers are keeping to the security standards that have been agreed to. 

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