As the stands were being packed away on the show floor at the end of the InfoSecurity Europe 2024 conference in London this week (June 4-6), it was time for exhibitors and attendees to take stock of the three-day event. The mood among exhibitors as they packed everything away in cardboard boxes was distinctly upbeat compared to last year’s event, which was still overshadowed by two long years of lockdown.
“It was great to be among people two years post-pandemic and to be able to see the whites of their eyes and the smiles on their faces. In an industry as serious as cybersecurity, it is also important to have face-to-face moments of levity and bonhomie,” said Matt Butterworth, senior account manager at data erasure specialist Blancco Technologies.
Neal Smyth, of managed cloud and cybersecurity company Ekco, commented: “Our presentation was oversubscribed with standing-room only. As well as generating leads, we had more customers coming to the stand this year. For example, a representative of a government department simply turned up and asked us to tender. I also hear that other exhibitors were seeing more potential customers attending InfoSecurity this year.”
The industry is showing a new-found maturity
Attendees also generally agreed that the stands were better designed and more professional than in previous years, which is to be expected from an industry that is rapidly maturing. More streamlined and focused corporate messaging largely replaced the free light sabers and mugs InfoSecurity exhibitors had relied on to attract footfall to their stands in previous years.
Another indication of the cyber industry’s new-found maturity was the success of the stand run by InfoSecurity’s new charity partner, Every Child Online, which was collecting laptops, computers, and old kits at the show. The charity wipes all existing data from the devices before distributing them to selected schools across England.
“The response at the conference has been phenomenal,” said Every Child Online CEO, Mike Tarbard: “Attendees brought their old digital devices and numerous corporate exhibitors have promised to be sending us all their old kit.”
However, a minor but recurring gripe from exhibitors across the show floor was the number of attendees asking if their services were “AI-powered.” They said that many of those visiting their stands seemed to have swallowed Silicon Valley’s marketing hype surrounding artificial intelligence hook, line, and sinker, even though the conference’s keynote speaker had made it clear on the first day that AI is only a form of machine learning (ML), something that the cybersecurity industry has been using for years.
But the overwhelming consensus on the showroom floor was that it was good to get back to face-to-face networking after a two-year break during lockdown. On the evening of the second day, the conference’s annual Cyber House Party networking event was packed, with long queues forming outside in the early summer evening for the after-party networking opportunity.
Many international cybersecurity firms now appear to be starting to see the annual InfoSecurity Conference in London as a serious alternative to the RSA Conference that is held every year in San Francisco. While the big firms still feel obliged to support both events, many medium-sized companies this paper spoke with said they felt that InfoSecurity was more within their budget and much easier to travel to.
However, the sector’s short history has proven that it is a certainty that some of today’s medium-sized companies will become tomorrow’s cybersecurity giants. And as corporate attendance at annual international conferences is largely a matter of habit, it looks as if RSA may now have a serious rival from across the pond.
