Women cybersecurity leaders dominate VirtuPort’s MENAISC2021

The ninth edition of VirtuPort’s Middle East & North Africa Information Security Conference 2021 (MENAISC2021), being held as a hybrid virtual event on May 25 and 26, is marked by an overwhelming presence of women leaders from the cybersecurity field.

The conference, being held this year under the theme “Cybersecurity Vigilance, Continuous Monitoring & Mitigation: Understanding the Impact of the 5G Era” includes the participation of eight pioneering female cybersecurity experts who are all speaking on the importance of strengthening cybersecurity vigilance across several important sectors.

Dr. Mariam Nouh, assistant professor at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), and co-director of the Center for Complex Engineering Systems at KACST and MIT at Hemaya, presented a speech titled “Catch me if you can! Leveraging threat intelligence in combating cybercrimes.”

Olga Polishchuk, senior director, investigations & analysis at ZeroFOX, spoke on the subject “A year in threat intelligence: Looking back at the 2020 threat intelligence timeline and predicting trends for 2021.”

Dr. Sanjana Mehta, head of market research and public policy EMEA at (ISC)², shared her expertise on the topic “Understanding the Cybersecurity Workforce,” in which she explored a number of important questions about the professionals who work to keep our safety and security online, and the challenges and concerns they face.

She explained: “Using findings from (ISC)2’s exclusive research studies, we examined the composition of the cybersecurity workforce, what motivates and concerns them, how they have handled the last year of unprecedented change and look at which members of an organization actually are responsible for cybersecurity. We also identified where the challenges are in creating a more diverse and balanced community of practitioners, as well as looked at those pursuing a cybersecurity career to understand what they are seeking from employers, training, career progression and what their future expectations are for the sector.”

Dr. Sorcha Healy, principal engineer and lead data scientist at McAfee, spoke about McAfee MVISION Insights, which she said offers the ability to track and protect against prevalent cyberthreats in the Middle East. She added that MVISION Insights is leading the effort to unite against cybercriminals for the benefit of all.

Christelle Heikkila, IT director at Arsenal football club, spoke on the importance of protecting the data of leading sports teams with unique cyber protection.

Lama Al-Hudaithy, cybersecurity analyst at CyberX, spoke about “Learning Management System (LMS) and Phishing Softwares.”

Cristina Vatamanu, senior team lead – cyber threat intelligence lab at Bitdefender, discussed Naikon, a threat actor that targets military organizations in the South Asia region and has been active for more than a decade. Naikon managed to stay under the radar for almost two years, gathering intelligence for cyber-espionage purposes. In her speech “Long-running military cyber-espionage operation,” she revealed a wide set of tools used in this operation dedicated to particular steps in the kill-chain, in addition to a new backdoor used by the Naikon threat actors, dubbed Nebulae.