Promoting cybersecurity in Luxembourg and worldwide

Promoting cybersecurity in Luxembourg and worldwide

Organized by SECURITYMADEIN.LU, Cybersecurity Week Luxembourg highlights the Luxembourg cybersecurity ecosystem. With the involvement of key national players—including Proximus NXT, which plays a very active role in it—the initiative aims to position the country as a leading European hub for startups, talent, and experts in the field of cybersecurity, as well as for investors seeking growth opportunities.

Cybersecurity Week Luxembourg, which is part of the European Cybersecurity Month, also hosts parallel events such as the hack.lu convention and the MISP Threat Intelligence Summit.

Contributing to the development of the tool

Sabrina Mancer, Cybersecurity Engineer at Proximus NXT, attended with great interest the 4th edition of the summit dedicated to the MISP platform. “MISP is an open-source software developed by CIRCL with the participation of the Belgian Defence and NATO’s Computer Incident Response Capability,” she explains. “The MISP platform is used today by various organizations, not only to store, share, and collaborate on malware, but also to use Indicators of Compromise in order to detect and prevent attacks.”

“The goal of the October 2018 summit was to exchange on the current use of MISP, future developments, and its integration with global security ecosystems,” continues Sabrina Mancer. “Being directly in contact with the specialists developing the tools allows us to make suggestions, report bugs, or contribute to the development of the tool,” she adds.

An absolute necessity

hack.lu, whose 14th edition took place from October 16th to 18th as part of Cybersecurity Week Luxembourg, is an open convention where participants can discuss IT security, privacy, and information technologies, as well as their cultural and technical implications for society.

“My mission within the cybersecurity department is to look for vulnerabilities and uncover flaws that could compromise networks,” explains Philippe Majkowski, Senior Consulting Engineer and Pentester at Proximus NXT. “That is why participating in an event like hack.lu is, in my opinion, an absolute necessity. Proximus NXT is also heavily involved,” he recalls. Proximus NXT thus provided numerous prizes to the winners of the Capture The Flag competition, a challenge involving exploiting vulnerabilities in software in order to break into systems and retrieve flags proving the intrusion.

“hack.lu allows us to take a full overview of the latest cybersecurity developments in Luxembourg and worldwide. It gives us new ideas, new tools, and new methods that we can use in client projects to ensure protection against the latest attack trends that could impact them,” says Philippe Majkowski. “It also gives us a good insight into how non-specialists perceive cybersecurity,” he adds. “Because security is not only about high tech. Cybersecurity starts with the user, who must learn basic best practices, use strong passwords, protect themselves against phishing attempts, but also understand the need to protect data and the impact of cyber threats on their company’s operations.”

“hack.lu of course allows cybersecurity specialists to attend demonstrations of advanced hacking techniques,” Philippe Majkowski concedes, “but it must be kept in mind that security starts with users, who are on the front line and must therefore be the first line of defense, relying on simple policies such as choosing a strong password… and changing it when necessary (in case of a leak, suspicion, or compromise, etc.)!”

“I have been participating in hack.lu for several years,” he continues. “Over time, the event has become more international, and participants now come from all over the world: Russia, the United States, China, Korea, among others. hack.lu now competes with major international events such as Nuit du Hack in France, the Chaos Communication Congress in Germany, or even DEF CON in Las Vegas. It shows that security is not perceived in the same way everywhere and that some sectors do not sufficiently take into account the risks related to their exposure to cyber threats. That is why it is important to never stop cybersecurity awareness and education efforts and to extend them to all sectors,” he concludes.