At an executive dinner in Johannesburg, held prior to the ITWeb Security Summit, experts discussed the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on cybersecurity and the critical need for enhanced collaboration and harmonization to tackle emerging cyber threats. The dinner featured a roundtable where Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) convened to address new challenges in multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
Bertus Engelbrecht, Acting Managing Executive of Cybersecurity at BCX, emphasized the growing relevance of AI in cybersecurity discussions. “CISOs require leadership, resilience, and adaptability to effectively integrate new technologies into our processes and defenses,” Engelbrecht noted during his remarks.
Daniel Cuthbert, Global Head of Cyber Security Research at Santander and a member of the Cyber Technology External Advisory Group at the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), stressed the importance of addressing vulnerabilities in software. He advocated for greater collaboration among CISOs to share information on these vulnerabilities.
The event also touched on the challenges and potential risks associated with the use of a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), which lists all components and libraries in a software. While SBOMs aid in transparency, they also potentially provide malicious actors with easier access to exploit known weaknesses.
Nanjira Sambuli, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, highlighted the significance of bolstering security in Africa’s financial systems and fintech ecosystems. She raised concerns about vulnerabilities from outdated devices and sociocultural factors that contribute to phishing risks. Sambuli also pointed out the insufficient adoption of the African Union Convention on Cybersecurity and Personal Data Protection, which aims to establish a unified regulatory framework for cybersecurity across Africa.
The ITWeb Security Summit, now taking place in Sandton, features a series of talks on AI, generative AI, cloud security, and developing more agile, adaptable responses to the evolving landscape of cyber risks. Highlights include Daniel Cuthbert’s analysis of the implications of generative AI for cybersecurity defense strategies, and Nanjira Sambuli’s presentation on cybersecurity and capacity building within Africa’s digital financial ecosystems.
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