Local and international cybersecurity leaders to lead keynote sessions and panel discussions in free annual cybersecurity conference

Leading cybersecurity company Trend Micro will be holding its annual cybersecurity conference titled DECODE 2022: Detect & Respond this November 28 and 29, 2022. On this year’s two-day virtual event, Trend Micro will bring together the best cybersecurity professionals and experts to discuss industry trends, case studies, and security best practices.

DECODE 2022: Detect & Respond will have six keynote presentations and over 40 sessions across four key tracks. Participants will learn about recent and relevant developments in the security industry, including emerging threats and vulnerabilities, deepfakes, fake news, scams and spam, IoT and critical infrastructures, and threat hunting and incident response.

One of DECODE 2022: Detect & Respond’s speakers is Jay Yaneza, Trend Micro’s director of global operations. As one of Trend Micro’s directors, he has extensive knowledge in and years of experience with cyberthreat research, security operations center (SOC) management, and managed service development.

“This year’s DECODE shines a light on cybersecurity trends and aims to arm IT departments with the necessary knowledge to detect, respond, and remain ahead of threats, especially as the landscape continuously evolves,” remarked Yaneza.

“Cybersecurity is still the top concern for most chief information officers (CIOs) today, and with this conference, Trend Micro hopes to continue to provide a platform for awareness, learning, and insight-sharing, the way we have done in the past years of DECODE,” Yaneza added.

Shane Cross, head of the Cybercrime Intelligence Unit and Cyber Fusion Center from

INTERPOL’s Cybercrime Threat Response Sub-Directorate will also be returning to DECODE this year. Cross leads a team of law enforcement personnel and works with cyber intelligence analysts and private sector partners to tackle cybercrime on a global scale. At last year’s DECODE conference, he talked about how cybercrimes have evolved during the global pandemic and how the cybercrime division operates in partnership with international governments.

Lauren Seawright, currently the FBI Intelligence Assistant Legal Attache (ALAT) assigned to the US Embassy in the Philippines, is also a returning speaker to the conference. Seawright previously worked for FBI’s Anchorage and Boston Divisions and also served as an intelligence analyst under the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Portland, Maine. Her session last year covered the threat landscape and how it has evolved locally and globally in the past few years.

Charmaine Valmonte and Anton Bonifacio, the chief information security officers (CISOs) of Aboitiz Group and Globe Group Philippines, respectively, will also be speaking at DECODE 2022: Detect & Respond. Valmonte, former vice president for IT risk management and resiliency at UnionBank of the Philippines, has 32 years of experience in IT risk management, cybersecurity operations, and organizational resiliency. Bonifacio, on the other hand, has more than 20 years of expertise in the IT and cybersecurity industries and has “built, grown, and continues to develop one of the largest captive cybersecurity and privacy teams in the country.”

Capping off the powerhouse roster of speakers is Ryan Flores, Trend Micro’s APAC Forward Looking Threat Research team senior manager. In a career that spans more than 20 years, Flores has held various positions at Trend Micro such as an antivirus engineer and incident response team manager.

Aligned with their mission of being “Engineered To Do Good,” Trend Micro is set to make DECODE 2022: Detect & Respond a memorable and insightful experience for all.

Registration for DECODE 2022: Detect & Respond is still ongoing. This two-day virtual conference is for IT professionals and students who are looking to expand their cybersecurity knowledge from a local to a global perspective. Register for FREE at decodeph.com.

Indirect costs and defense costs in the field of cybercrime are very high and significantly higher than classic crime. For example, in order to combat spam alone, produce spam software and provide education, billions of dollars are spent every year. The fact is that we, as a society, are very ineffective in the fight against cybercrime. Criminals, on the other hand, impose disproportionately high costs on the society. This mainly happens due to the global nature of cybercrime and strong external influences.

Therefore, experts who prepared offer the following response: “As for the more direct question of what should be done, our figures suggest that we should spend less in anticipation of cybercrime (on antivirus, firewalls, etc.) and more in response – that is, on the prosaic business of hunting down cyber-criminals and throwing them in jail”.

 In practice, the term “cybercrime” is applied to three categories of criminal activity:

•  Traditional forms of crime such as fraud or forgery, though in a cybercrime context this relates specifically to crimes committed over electronic communication networks and information systems;

•  The publication of illegal content over electronic media (i.e. child sexual abuse material or incitement to racial hatred);

•  Crimes unique to electronic networks, i.e. attacks against information systems, denial of service and hacking.

Here are the category costs for cybercrime activities

• Costs in anticipation of cybercrime, which include individual and organizational security measures (such as installing physical and virtual protection such as antiviral software), insurance costs and costs associated with gaining compliance to required IT standards (for example the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS));

• Costs as a consequence of cybercrime, which take into account direct losses to individuals and companies (including business continuity and disaster recovery response costs), and indirect losses arising from reduced commercial exploitation of IP and opportunity costs through weakened competitiveness;

• Costs in response to cybercrime, such as compensation payments to victims of identity theft, regulatory fines from industry bodies and indirect costs associated with legal or forensic issues;

• Indirect costs associated with cybercrime, which include such factors as reputational damage to organizations, loss of confidence in cyber transactions by individuals and businesses, reduced public sector revenues and the expansion of the underground economy.

• Cost of information loss or theft: loss or theft of sensitive and confidential information as a result of a cyberattack. Such information includes trade secrets, intellectual properties (including source code), customer information and employee records. This cost category also includes the cost of data breach notification in the event that personal information is wrongfully acquired.

• Cost of business disruption: the economic impact of downtime or unplanned outages that prevent the organization from meeting its data processing requirements.

• Cost of equipment damage: the cost to remediate equipment and other IT assets as a result of cyberattacks to information resources and critical infrastructure.

• Lost revenue: the loss of customers (churn) and other stakeholders because of system delays or shutdowns as a result of a cyberattack. To extrapolate this cost, we use a shadow costing method that relies on the “lifetime value” of an average customer as defined for each participating organization.

In terms of cybersecurity, the future is the most important time dimension. With respect to ensuring safety and eliminating threats, the activities undertaken in the present and the past are already too late; hence, it is necessary to focus on the analysis of potential risks and opportunities that will occur in the future. This book demonstrates that the existence of cybercrime is an indisputable fact. At the moment, cybercrime development and its threat to cyberspace users are increasing exponentially.

It is also known that cybercrime is expanding its range of operation and attracting ever more organized, sophisticated and covert perpetrators within its environment. Due to their political, economic or ideological motivations, these people represent the greatest threat to society because the societal consequences of their actions are much more detrimental than the consequences of traditional, financially motivated cybercrime.

In this context, it is clear that the perpetrators of criminal acts are not inactive, but are extremely up-to-date, flexible, adaptable and organized. It is precisely these attributes that law enforcement agencies, legislative acts, organizations and countries should possess when encountering threats in cyberspace. However, the current situation shows that the opposite holds true.

The future is here, and it requires that the participation of different actors, professionals and especially all interest groups be included in the plans for the development of cybersecurity strategies today.

Registration is now open for the biggest cybersecurity conference in the Philippines 

Always engineered to do good, Trend Micro Philippines continues its free annual cybersecurity conference this year with DECODE 2022: Detect &  Respond. This two-day virtual conference is set on November 28 and 29, 2022.

DECODE 2022: Detect & Respond will feature industry leaders from across the globe who will discuss the latest technologies, trends, threats, and opportunities in the fast-paced and ever-changing world of cybersecurity.

“Doing everything in its power to spread awareness and empower Filipinos, Trend Micro holds  these free-for-all conferences with the intent of keeping cybersecurity professionals informed,  inspired, and well-networked with their peers in the industry. This benefits not only their individual careers, but also the countrymen their work serves to protect,” stated Alma Saturnino-Alvarez,  Threat Hunting Director of Trend Micro.

Last year’s conference, DECODE 2021: DEC1DE. DEC0DE, garnered an audience of over 1,200  individuals. It also featured various case studies, discussions of top threats and risks, and an analysis of how a Chief Information Security Officer’s (CISO) role in a company has evolved through the years. The event also highlighted Trend Micro’s advocacy of uplifting women in the tech industry via a “Get IT Girl!” session that featured a Q&A activity with Olympiad Nesthy Petecio and a panel discussion that talked about diversity and inclusivity in tech.

This year, DECODE 2022: Detect & Respond will have six keynote presentations and over 40  sessions across four key tracks. Attendees will learn about recent and relevant developments in the security industry, including emerging threats and vulnerabilities, deepfakes, fake news, scams and spam, IoT and critical infrastructures, and threat hunting and incident response. They will also learn how to act on the knowledge they gained from the past five years of DECODE conferences to seamlessly detect and address security gaps through tried-and-tested methods and tools, quickly identify risk levels, and respond swiftly and accordingly to various threats.

DECODE 2022: Detect & Respond, which promotes the efficiency and efficacy of cybersecurity systems to secure organizations and communities, is an online event where IT professionals and students can learn and network virtually. Conference recordings will be made accessible to all attendees until a year after the event.

With DECODE now on its sixth year, Trend Micro furthers its initiative to improve the cybersecurity industry by bringing top security experts to the Philippines’ largest annual cybersecurity conference.

Register now to be a part of DECODE 2022: Detect & Respond at www.decodeph.com.