it-sa 2023: A journey through the world of IT security

At this year’s it-sa in Nuremberg, I wasn’t really surprised by the big crowd, but the difference to the sad event in 2021 during the pandemic was impressive. The three halls were packed with over 700 exhibitors and when I arrived later in the morning, it took me some time to find a parking space. it-sa is becoming one of the most important IT trade fairs in Germany. The combination of the trade fair with numerous presentations as a congress is timely and offers visitors valuable information.

The market for security solutions is known to be very dynamic, and although I had expected the abundance of different solutions, I still found it a challenge to quickly get a comprehensive overview. I spent a whole day at the fair and still hadn’t seen everything.

The classic firewall, which serves as the basic technology to protect against unwanted network activities, is still prominently represented, but is obviously no longer the focus of visitors’ interest. Instead, the stands of cybersecurity solution providers are heavily frequented. Their approach is to use big data to get a more comprehensive view of all network activity. With the help of AI-based methods and correlations of this data, attacks are to be detected as early as possible. The prerequisite for this is corresponding agents in the firewalls and routers as data suppliers - an exciting, cross-manufacturer approach.

Of course, the offer of cyber security in the cloud is also very present. The promises here range from complete all-round worry-free solutions to solutions without any influence of their own.

Particularly interesting and a main driver for this blog post was a presentation by Florian Roth from Nextron Systems on the topic of ransomware. He has been working intensively on this topic for over ten years. In his informative and exceptional presentation, he shed light on the historical development of ransomware until today ("… it is partly not even encrypted anymore, the possession of the data is already enough …") and various attack possibilities.

At the end of his presentation, he focused on the measures to protect against ransomware, which are well known and surprisingly simple, even though consistent implementation is essential.

• Attachment filtering helps against phishing.
• Patch management helps against exploits.
• And multi-factor authentication must be used against brute force attacks.

It’s that simple! We at Collax are well positioned in this respect and offer you the ideal solution for comprehensive protection against threats with the Collax Security Gateway.