Earlier this month NCC Group held NCC Con Europe, boasting 500 attendees and more than 120 talks – all hosted in the beautiful city of Madrid.
During the three day conference we saw both technical, sales and other support teams come together and share information through talks, workshops and demonstrations.
NCC Con Europe is such an important event in the NCC Group calendar, as it brings together our European cyber security expertise all in one place and allows mass collaboration and forging of relationships that leads to a stronger and more innovative organisation.
To truly reflect on the collaborative atmosphere at NCC Con Europe we asked a selection of attendees for their thoughts on this year’s conference:
“NCC Con provided a great opportunity to spend some focused time with colleagues in other parts of NCC Group to discuss ways in which we can collaborate. Hearing about the work other business areas are doing in different parts of the world have helped me get a better understanding of the breadth and depth of work that we do. Some of the ‘quick chats’ I had there were incredibly useful.”
Stephen Bailey, Associate Director, Risk Management Governance
“NCC Con was an example of working culture and – why not admit it? – fun! The lightning talks were an opportunity for me not only to get to know co-workers better, but to see the ecosystem and meet the people behind the research, and also to share my research ideas and share my personal pursuits with the world’s top security professionals who attended #NCCCon18.
The exchange of research, tools, ideas, networking, training and the opportunity to test, share and show our skills to other colleagues is what NCC Con Europe is all about.”
Juan Garrido, Senior Security Consultant
“The most amazing thing for me regarding this conference was the vast number of conversations I was able to have with colleagues from around Europe, APAC and some of the US. Being able to put faces to names that I am familiar with from just email was invaluable in building internal relationships. I had so many great conversations on future research and innovation ideas and came back from the conference with a to-do list twice as long as my arms, but this is a list full of great ideas that I look forward to realising with the great colleagues and talent that I met in Madrid.”
Matt Lewis, Research Director
“It was my first ever NCC Con and I was absolutely blown away by it. In addition to seeing, catching up and hanging out with international colleagues and making connections to be taken beyond Madrid, I am still marvelling at the insight I gained into the very many awesome things we do.
Having joined in November last year, I am amazed how much I am still able to learn about just how diverse our offer and experience is. Just to hammer this home: I was asked today which of the many talks and presentations I attended was my favourite and truthfully, I struggled to answer this. The fact that they all offered a unique perspective and insight is testament to the unbelievable breadth and depth of expertise we collectively hold across the business in its various divisions and locations around the globe. I loved the EternalGlue presentation because it gave such great insight into the technical brilliance of our Exploit Development Group, I was utterly fascinated by Fox IT’s presentation on securing the voting system software because the approach taken made clear the importance of taking account of not just technical security but client’s wider objectives and considerations, and I really enjoyed Adam Rudderman’s Bug Bounty programme presentation, because it emphasised that what is often required for success is a mix of technical expertise and business operational acumen.”
Katharina Sommer, Head of Public Affairs
“What a great venue – to be greeted by the Ninja logos and our own check-in area made a great first impression and really emphasised the scale of our business. The breadth and scale of our business was one of the highlights – our ability to provide customers with real experts over a vast range of subjects is one that is unmatched by our competitors.
The NCSC guest speaker was excellent – my take-away was that as an industry we need to expend as much effort on actually fixing things as we do on detection or protection – there’s no point in finding all these vulnerabilities if they aren’t being fixed/patched or customers are not deploying fixes/patches.
The team organising the event did an amazing job, the atmosphere was very positive and collaboration between the various areas of the business was excellent. It’s really raised the bar from Dublin and whoever organises next year’s NCC Con has a very hard act to follow!”
Graham McElroy, CTO of Security Network Operations
“For sure, no other conference beats this get-together with experts and colleagues from NCC Group offices all over the world. We came up with great new innovative projects, while discussing our customers’ needs and the ever changing cyber threat landscape. For me, NCC Con is not just a tech eye-opener, but also a people door-opener.”
Mathilde van Nek, Commercial Product Manager, Fox-IT
“NCC Con is our one opportunity in the year to bring together the world’s greatest cyber expertise and minds under one roof to enable rich collaboration and learning that can’t be achieved by other means. To be given the opportunity to be part of something that gives SO much back to the NCC Group team is an honour, it really has been a pleasure leading the organising this year and working with a team who have truly grasped the impact and value NCC Con brings to us all.”
Steve Powell, Associate Director, Security Consulting NCC Con Europe 2018 Organiser
Check out our overview video below, and if you’re interested in joining NCC Group and attending next year’s conference, take a look at our job vacancies page here.
Published date: 27 July 2018
Written by: Matt Lewis, Stephen Bailey , Graham McElroy, Juan Garrido, Mathilde van Nek, Steve Powell and Katharina Sommer
