IT Security Conference for the Next Generation

The Kaspersky Academy Program European tour culminated with the ‘IT Security for the Next Generation’ KL students’ conference which was held on the campus of the University of East London with the support of the university itself. More than 80 students and professors from leading European universities took part in the conference, along with members of the German police’s cybercrime unit, representatives from Kaspersky Lab HQ and regional offices and an invited audience.

During the conference the students had the opportunity to deliver the findings of their research to an audience consisting of Kaspersky Lab’s experts, professors from various leading European universities, the event’s sponsors and other participants present. The program committee for the conference consisted of: Dr. Steven Furnell (University of Plymouth, England), Dr. Hannes Federrath (University of Regensburg, Germany), Dr. Orhan Gemikonakli (Middlesex University, England) and Dr. Hamid Jahankhani (University of East London, England).

The Program Committee carefully evaluated the students’ performance according to the following criteria: the social significance and relevance of the project, practicality, innovation, presentation skills and the students’ ability to respond to questions. The winners were announced on November 22, 2009. Yi-Tung F. Chan (University of Wales) won bronze for his project ‘A Novel Solution on Alert Conflict Resolution Modeling in Network Management’. Niki Aikaterinaki (Royal Holloway University) took silver with ‘Drive-by download attacks: Effects and Detection Methods’ and Camilo Gonzalez (University of Birmingham) won the gold with ’Analysis of BitTorrent Peers’ Behavior and Monitoring Trends’. All of the participants received certificates and the winners received valuable awards and an invitation to participate in the final international round of the conference in Poland in April 2010, at which the winners of the Asian, Russian and European tours will be brought together.

The conference agenda also included workshops given by Kaspersky Lab’s experts, which saw the experts answering questions, making recommendations regarding project follow-ups and informing the group about the latest developments in anti-cybercrime methodology. In addition to the above, round-table discussions on Kaspersky Lab’s educational initiatives in Europe were held at which a decision was taken to launch a number of joint projects with European universities that will be supported by the company’s regional offices. The audience and participants repeatedly highlighted their intentions to participate in next year’s “IT Security Conference for the Next Generation” and consulted with professors and KL experts regarding the most topical subjects and best methods of presentation. The conference identified some very talented future specialists and provided a platform on which to share knowledge and experience as well as new ideas in the fight against cybercrime.

Christel Bazkowa, Education Manager Europe, comments: “Europe’s first ever “IT Security Conference for the Next Generation” has been a great success. More than 80 young scholars, experienced university professors and experts from Kaspersky Lab dealing with seven areas of IT security presented the latest in information technology research and held workshops and roundtables to discuss methods of information security. They emphasized the need for much more explanatory work to be done to raise public awareness of Internet threats. This Kaspersky Lab IT security conference has laid the foundation for a worldwide network closely bringing together scholarly research and commerce.”

Conference Topics were as follows:

• Future ICT-related problems
• Psychology of cybercrime
• Economic structure of cybercrime
• Online commerce of e-crime
• Law and security: e.g. intellectual property (Rights & Innovation, Rights Transfer)
• Impact, threats, incidents caused by botnets
• Measuring malware & spam