2nd UK Wisdom of Crowds conference held at The Belfry

Cyber Management Alliance were back at The Belfry in Warwickshire on 17th and 18th October 2017 hosting their second live Wisdom of Crowds event. Amar Singh and the team welcomed attendees from the world of cyber security to collaborate, create and share their insights into ‘Building a Cloud-Based Secure Enterprise’.

Wisdom of Crowds is an exciting and innovative concept from cyber security professionals, Cyber Management Alliance. Their exclusive series of events offer cyber security professionals the unique opportunity to join together to collaborate, create and distribute their valuable knowledge and experience with like-minded colleagues on the topics of cyber security, data privacy, regulatory compliance and other security-related issues. The events are based on the principle that the ‘wisdom of many surpasses the knowledge of a single or few’; and our second live event was no exception!

“The very concept of the Wisdom of Crowds is that the Wisdom of Crowds far exceeds the experience of one or a few.” Amar Singh, Cyber Management Alliance

Against the backdrop of this world-famous Ryder Cup golf course, the ground-breaking Wisdom of Crowds live event focused on aspects of building a secure cloud infrastructure and providing the right level of application security, whilst ensuring sufficient availability of cloud systems that will protect the personal information of employees and customers, a necessary requirement for businesses in order to comply with the new EU GDPR regulations that are coming into force in May 2018.

The event’s sponsors – E2E Assure, ShieldX, Human Firewall, Dedrone, Trend Micro, Ipswitch and Advanced Cyber Solutions - and highly respected members of the cyber security fraternity joined Cyber Management Alliance on the evening of 17th October for a Wisdom of Crowds dinner, enjoying a delicious meal whilst enjoying the delights of an entertaining magician – don’t despair, no watches were damaged and no coins went missing!

The following day, attendees and sponsors in groups were tasked with several challenges to create a ‘book’ based on Building a Cloud-Based Secure Enterprise. During a lively mind map session, groups were asked to collaborate and share their thoughts in developing checklists that asked the right questions in building a cloud solution, including a secure infrastructure, availability of cloud applications, adhering to data compliance and data processing. The following two challenges tested the groups mind maps. Split into teams of two, attendees were asked to create a ‘chapter and verse’ for the ‘book’, which were then discussed and debated to share high value content. In addition, Rob Demain from sponsors, E2E Assure, delivered an insightful keynote presentation – ‘SoC: Getting the Basics Right’.

“It’s not just a series of simple presentations that are given out, it’s discussions with your peers about what you can actually take away, and actionable things that you can start doing – I really feel it’s been very interesting, very useful and the mix of people around the tables has been very, very interesting; the different points coming from the tables is really great.I’m really looking forward to seeing what comes out of this event afterwards.” Quentyn Taylor, Canon Europe

On the morning of Day Two, Dedrone presented all attendees with an excellent demonstration of their drone detection technology and the all-round capabilities of their drones. Dedrone also kindly gave away one of their drones and Aaron Townsend from British Medical Journal was the lucky winner pulled from the hat!

Leading security professionals from Catalyst Housing, Canon Europe, AXA, DigitalLaw UK, DP Governance, the OCS Group, Unipart, Ford, GSK and other organisations attended Cyber Management Alliance’s second live Wisdom of Crowds and were delighted with the event’s outcome.

“It’s a chance to network with true peers and understand where you are in the industry, and how the rest of the industry – a cross-sector – is actually dealing with the problems of today. It’s good to share all the war stories, all the scars, all the bad practice out there, and learn from each other.” Edward Tucker, European CISO of the Year 2017

“We looked at things in a very different way, came up with a number of quite surprising outcomes – a couple of books are going to be produced from this as well.” Mark Green, AXA

“The content that’s created from a crowd sourced security perspective is just phenomenol. True collaboration between the groups, working together, and all having a share in a common goal.” Jason Walton, Pearson

“Today has allowed us to bounce those ideas of each other which we can take back in a constructive way and unlike most conferences, what we have today is actual output with tangible documentation and tangible toolsets that we can use in our various industries, verticals and professions.” Andrew Giles, Aviva

“Wisdom of Crowds is proving to be a fantastic opportunity as a sponsor. We’ve had meaningful discussions and established good relationships; they’ve really liked the product that we’ve been able to showcase and more importantly, it’s the involvement of the people in a closed circuit environment that’s beneficial.” Ankush Johar, Human Firewall

For more information on future Wisdom of Crowds events, become a sponsor or would like to attend a Wisdom of Crowds event, click here or contact us today.

For more information on Cyber Management Alliance, ISO 27001 Certification, their Live Online CISSP Training & Mentorship program, GDPR consultation and workshops, and other courses, webinars, the Wisdom of Crowds live and virtual events, and their Insights With Cyber Leaders series of executive interviews, click here or contact us today.