Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) – On 16 April, IDC, an international analytical company, held the Antivirus Online Session “Security as a Component of a Sustainable Business Strategy in the New World Realities” online conference in Central Asia. The conference was attended by more than 150 leaders and experts in the field of information security from seven countries of the region.

The conference was supported by the Computer Incident Response Service of the Republic of Kazakhstan and international leaders in the information security industry: Kaspersky Lab, VEEAM, Fortinet, Juniper Networks, Veritas Technologies.

Due to the proliferation of COVID-19, companies are forced to comply with government regulations by switching to a remote mode of operation. There are risks of incorrect configuration tinctures and an increase in the number of shadow devices used. Attackers exploit the uncertainty situation for high-performance phishing campaigns. In conditions of self-isolation, cybersecurity experts and SOC analysts are also forced to work remotely, which makes it inconvenient to control a changing perimeter. Speakers of the conference presented a number of solutions and recommendations allowing to ensure the effective work of the company in the current situation and to design effective work in the future.

Denis Maslennikov opened the conference with an analytical presentation by IDC. He outlined a number of measures that companies need to take to respond to new challenges of the time. “Firstly, it is necessary to secure remote access systems, secondly, to test and even increase the capacity of systems, also to increase awareness of the mechanisms for supporting remote information technologies and update incident response plans to take into account changes in the workforce in a distributed environment,” he stressed IDC analyst in his report.

Medet Iskakov, head of the computer incident response service, KZ-CERT, spoke about incidents and cases that occurred in the Republic of Kazakhstan during the state of emergency. In total, 1818 were discovered in a month. Medet presented a number of KZ-CERT recommendations for organizing safe remote work on the network, voiced the basic rules of cyber hygiene that must be implemented in enterprises.

Yevgeny Pitolin, managing director of Kaspersky Lab in Central Asia, the CIS and the Baltic States, looked ahead in his report, ahead of what tasks CISO, CIO, IT administrators will have after quarantine. According to Eugene, BYOD will become a new norm, entail the use of MDM on personal devices (so far, according to Kaspersky Lab, less than a percent of large corporations in Kazakhstan use MDM), and a full-scale VPN will be used. Among the new tasks of the IS service are waiting for incident management in the conditions of unstable communication channels, the protection of smart homes by top managers, and work with espionage. A number of issues for security guards will need to be addressed in close cooperation with HR: ensuring comfortable work at home, creating a culture of conference communication - these tasks need to be addressed systematically. To implement these projects, a major budget review is ahead.

Further in the conference program, the participants were able to get deeper acquainted with the tools for solving the most pressing problems. Nikita Kozlenko, systems engineer, VEEAM introduced a number of solutions for protecting data during remote work. Alexey Andriyashin, Fortinet Technical Director for Russia and the CIS, spoke about expanding the remote access capabilities on the scale of the company’s infrastructure. Pavel Zhivov, senior systems engineer, Juniper Networks in Russia and the CIS, spoke about how reaction automation in network security solutions helps ensure the minimum possible time to block a threat, providing an effective counter to attack automation. Nikolai Kuzmin, sales manager in the CIS, Georgia and Ukraine, Veritas Technologies, completed the series of reports, talking about the platform for analytics for IT infrastructure - the APTARE solution.

At the end of the event, representatives of IDC and Kaspersky Lab won prizes among the most attentive and active listeners.