CyberSec Expo 2020

In response to the Covid 19 pandemic CyberSec 2020 has gone virtual! 

So at the end of September Awen Collective will be virtually heading off to virtual Poland to present (virtually) on the CyberSec Expo Stage. DIT (UK Department for International Trade) is hosting one of the stage sessions where 12 British Companies will be part of the UK Pavilion and Presentation panel. 

Awen’s presentation is scheduled for 11:20am GMT+2 (so that will be 10:20 BST) on the 28th September, and there will be an opportunity for discussion through a virtual room hosted by DIT and the British Embassy in Warsaw. Click here for the agenda for the event.

Awen is really looking forward to this event and the opportunity to virtually meet the movers and shakers in Cyber Security from around Europe and the whole globe. 

Registration for the event is free, click here [archive.org]. Hope to see you there.

Event write-up: Black Hat Europe 2019

In early December, the Awen Collective team descended on Black Hat Europe 2019 at ExCeL London!

Our CEO and CTO, Daniel and Jules, and our developers Jamie, Seren and Lara were on hand at the Tech Nation Cyber Pavilion to distribute both knowledge about the excellent cyber security software solutions we provide to operators of industrial control systems, and also high quality welsh cakes to match!

Alongside us were both representatives from Tech Nation Cyber, and fellow Cyber 1.0 alumni companies, Skurio and Keepnet Labs.

We had some great conversations with operators of vital industrial control systems who were interested in our software, with investors interested in the growing demand for industrial cyber solutions, and with fellow cyber security professionals, interested in sharing knowledge on cutting edge solutions. Oh, and some lovely people who just really liked Welsh cakes!

We also took the opportunity to see what other great cyber solutions were being exhibited at Black Hat, and attend some very interesting briefings. A highlight was a presentation on exploiting vulnerabilities in a Siemens S7 PLC, one of the most common devices used within industrial control environments.

We’d like to thank Tech Nation for inviting us to exhibit on their stand, and to the organisers of Black Hat Europe for putting on such a great event.

Event: Factory of the Future - Big Data and Automation

Last Tuesday (10th September 2019) Awen attended the Factory of the Future (Big Data & Automation) event organised by ESTnet, supported by Barclays and hosted by the Newport Wafer Fab.

We heard from three keynote speakers:

• Mike Lakoju [archive.org] from Cardiff University, who spoke about the Chatty Factories project which attempts to apply cutting-edge data science techniques for a variety of factory-floor applications.

• Emily Bristow from BluePrism, who spoke about their software bot system RPA used to automate IT & business processes

• Gareth Jones from the industrial automation division of Omron Electronics in the UK.

We also had a great tour around the wonderful Newport Wafer Fab.

We were invited by the organisers to come along to exhibit our software & services as part of a local showcase of solution providers within Factory of the Future / Industry 4.0 / Smart Factories. We spoke to delegates about our asset & vulnerability discovery for OT system Dot, our NIS Directive compliance system Profile, and the past-present-future of Awen Collective in general.

Awen develops software which provides practical solutions to cyber security problems in industrial environments, and we do so through local and global lenses. We will continue the dialogue with all partners involved in this event, and invite others reading this to contact us today to get involved in that dialogue.