Cyber threats to be explored at conference

The Cyberisle conference is due to take place on Thursday

An annual conference designed to help people and businesses "prepare, respond and recover" from cyber-attacks is set to take place later this week.

The Isle of Man government's sixth annual Cyberisle event takes place at the Comis Hotel on Thursday.

The event features 20 presentations, talks and panel discussions involving world renowned experts from bodies such as Microsoft and the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

Topics set to be covered include practical advice for small businesses, artificial intelligence, and the deception techniques used by criminals.

Chief security advisor for Microsoft Lesley Kipling will talk about the lessons learned from the Midnight Blizzard cyber attack, which the technology giant faced last year.

The event will also see three representatives from NCSC, the UK government’s technical authority for cyber threats, discuss how the nations of the British Isles can work together to safeguard national infrastructure.

Prevention

Director of the Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance (Ocsia) Mike Haywood said the island faced the same threats as the rest of the world, including ransomware, identity theft, phishing and the hacking of social media accounts.

Mr Haywood said: "A lot of the things we see reported to us are with regards to either loss of access to accounts, or concerns that people's passwords and credentials have maybe been harvested by criminals, and what can they do to keep their information safe."

He said those who could not make it to the free event could find advice and guidance on how to "try and prevent the worst happening, as well as what you should do with the worst does happen" on the island's Cyber Security Centre's website.

Mr Haywood said while Ocsia had seen various fake Facebook pages and scams recently, on a national level there were "regular attempts to breach the government’s network, which are picked up and filtered by our network security team".