Responding to Cyber Threats Against Critical Infrastructures: Wired Business Media Acquires Long Running ICS Cybersecurity Conference Series
BOSTON, MA – Wired Business Media, a leading provider of business-to-business (B2B) information to technology professionals around the world, announced today that it has acquired the ICS Cybersecurity Conference series, the leading organizer of cybersecurity-focused events for the industrial control systems sector.
The highly regarded conference series adds to the growing portfolio of innovative events under Wired Business Media’s flagship publication, SecurityWeek.
This powerful combination enhances an already robust conference series catering to the energy, utility, chemical, transportation, manufacturing, and other industrial and critical infrastructure organizations, with expansion into Europe and the Middle East planned for 2015.
The industrial infrastructure sector’s need for remote access and adoption of Internet-facing technologies have created significant vulnerabilities that must be addressed. In the extraordinarily broad world of cyber systems, the critical industrial infrastructure sector has had more than its fair share of unintentional cyber incidents as well as cyber attacks.
To date, unintentional cyber incidents and actual cyber attacks have resulted in multiple deaths and hundreds of millions of dollars in damages across almost all industrial sectors worldwide. The only way to address the ICS cyber security problem is to join the strengths of the ICS community’s domain knowledge and the IT community’s cyber security knowledge.
“SecurityWeek’s investment in this influential conference series ensures that the platform will serve as a catalyst for a strategic dialog to protect ICSs around the world,” said Michael Lennon, Managing Director at SecurityWeek.
The planned international expansion of the ICS Conference Series represents the collective response to the myriad cyber threats facing operators of ICS around the world, and will address topics covering ICSs, including protection for SCADA systems, plant control systems, engineering workstations, substation equipment, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and other field control system devices.
“The fusion of SecurityWeek and the ICS Cybersecurity Conference series ushers in a new era of information sharing across the control system and IT communities,” Lennon added. “This collective effort to defend the critical infrastructures from cyber attacks is historic.”
“The IT community and ICS community are now bridging the security gap,” said Joe Weiss, founder of the ICS Cybersecurity Conference. “The value to attendees at the ICS Cybersecurity Conference is inherent with the robust exchange of technical information, actual incidents, insights and best practices to help protect critical infrastructures from cyber attacks.”
“It has become paramount that critical infrastructures balance the needs of ICS reliability and safety with cyber security,” Weiss added.
Weiss will remain heavily involved in the event series as a key member of the conference management team.
The first ICS Cyber Security Conference produced under the SecurityWeek brand will take place in October 2014 in Atlanta, Georgia.
For conference registration and sponsorship information please contact SecurityWeek.
