Event Recap
One of our flagship events, it was great seeing so many new and familiar faces at our Winning the Cyber Siege Workshop & Clay Pigeon Shoot at Slaley Hall Hotel in Northumberland.
For this workshop we were joined by our partners from Blackpoint Cyber, bringing their expert knowledge from their international security operations centre (SOC) to the north east.
We covered how AI has lowered barriers to entry and compressed the time it takes to execute every stage of an attack, the tools, techniques and procedures attackers use and, what effective defence looks like in practice.
We opened the workshop with a throwback to the “script kiddie”, someone who ran another person’s exploit that often failed – usually due to the skill gap between the script’s user and its actual creator.
AI is shrinking that gap. Our Blackpoint specialist discussed how tools like ransomware-as-a-service, open-source models and AI vibe coding are producing more capable attackers.
As a result, tactics and techniques that were previously reserved for nation-state level attacks are now being used against local SMBs.
As you can imagine the question on the minds of everyone in the room was, “How do we defend against this growing threat?”.
To answer the question, we pulled from the extensive data gathered by Blackpoint’s SOC. Presenting the timeline of a real attack caught and killed by the SOC, we exposed a critical consequence of the new AI reliance – it’s noticeably not human.
We discussed how AI had a notably robotic approach to its code writing. So, while AI is making launching an attack easier, it’s not necessarily harder to detect. We wrapped up the discussion with one of the most important takeaways of the event – Identifying malware isn’t enough you need to identify signs of tradecraft before the attack lands.
Before we took a break for a BBQ lunch on the terrace and hit the hills for some slightly competitive clay pigeon shooting, we asked everyone, “How prepared are you for these threats?”. And I’d encourage you to ask these questions of your business too:
All of our delegates walked away with a better understanding of the threats they face, why their businesses are being target more frequently and effectively and, most importantly how to stop them (or how to win the cyber siege).
If there’s 3 things I hope you takeaway from this article it’s this:
Thank you to everyone who joined us on the day, and congratulations to our clay shoot podium!
Too learn where you stand from a security posture perspective, contact us today and book your free cybersecurity consultation.
