'I feel bad for all the vendors that spent a lot of money' - How train strikes affected Infosecurity Europe 2022

Several vendors spoke to CRN about the strikes

There's no doubting the importance of the Infosecurity Europe conference. Attacks are becoming ever more common, with one study from Sophos showing 66 per cent of organisations surveyed were hit with ransomware in 2021, up from 37 per cent in 2020.

And with the IDC saying cybersecurity is now a 'primary business investment', the annual Infosecurity Europe event allows people to learn from each other, test and benchmark solutions.

Each year the event brings more than 13,000 visitors from all around the UK & Europe and whilst this year's conference - held from June 21-23 - at the ExCel, proved popular, it would have been affected in some way by the national train strikes.

Last minute talks to avoid them failed at the start of the week, with 24-hour walkouts by members of the RMT union occurring on Tuesday and Thursday, with 10,000 London Underground staff also striking on Tuesday.

Several vendors spoke to CRN about the strikes and what impact they felt it had on the event.

Florian Malecki, executive vice president of marketing for Arcserve, felt there had been less visitors due to the strikes, but felt the Infosec organisers had made the event successful.

He said the Wednesday had been very busy given no strikes were going ahead but said the Tuesday and Thursday had been quieter.

He said: "It was first time we were attending Infosec as a vendor and regardless of external elements, that meant that maybe there were less visitors that anticipated, it is what it is but we made the most of it.

"From my point of view, despite less visitors due to the strikes, it was successful."

Keith Weatherford, VP of worldwide channel sales at Forescout, said the walkouts created a "risk", saying vendors may not have been able to capitalise on the event.

He said: "I feel bad for all the vendors that spent a lot of money to be on the floor to have massive booths and all kinds of talent globally come into the event, there's the money that it goes into that. I hate seeing that money not being able to capitalise in the event.

"I also know the event team themselves have to be just grimacing as they as they walked into this week and I am hoping for the best for them."

Jonathan Whitley, regional vice president for Northern Europe at WatchGuard, said the strike action made things "unpredictable" but was not affected himself.

He said: "I actually flew into London City, so for me, it was just a quick walk from the airport.

"You can still get in, but I think its just a case of planning your journey a little bit better."

Despite the strikes, there were plenty of highlights from the event, with there being many keynote speeches including one from former head of MI5 Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller.

There was also a presentation from Lieutenant General Tom Copinger-Symes, deputy commander of the UK strategic command, with one also being made by Nitin Natarajan, deputy director at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Sessions were also held that covered best practice in areas ranging from ransomware response (Trend Micro) and SaaS security (Canonic Security), to investigating and disrupting cybercrime (Microsoft) and threat detection using log management (CrowdStrike).

Whitley highlighted that more new players in the market were at the event.

He said: "There's a lot of newer players making a much bigger impact. So its kind of interesting from that sense to see the exhibits and the sort of profiles changed a little bit."

Malecki added: "We see more and more of the IT decision maker from the security space getting involved into backup and recovery and storage. I would say this has been confirmed that at Infosec this year."

Nicole Mills, exhibition director at Infosecurity Group, said: "The theme we selected for Infosecurity Europe 2022 was ‘Stronger Together', and we've seen this philosophy brought to life countless time over the last three days.

"The cybersecurity industry must become more collaborative in its efforts to keep society safe and secure, and our visitors grasped every opportunity to do just that - from networking events to roundtable discussions, and from on-stand meetings to informal offsite get-togethers.

"A quarter century on from the first event, Infosecurity Europe continues to play a vital role in bringing the infosec community together to do business, exchange knowledge, ideas and experiences, and learn from each other."