As if there were not enough things going wrong with the world, Infosecurity Europe was hit by a good old-fashioned train strike.
Each year the event brings more than 13,000 visitors from all around the UK & Europe but last-minute talks with train workers to avoid the strikes broke down and there were 24-hour walkouts by members of the RMT union occurring on Tuesday and Thursday, with 10,000 London Underground staff also striking on Tuesday.
Infosec organisers claimed the event was successful but some vendors reported that numbers were down from what they expected.
Wednesday was very busy given no strikes were going ahead but Tuesday and Thursday were a bit tumbleweed.
Some vendors claimed that the walkouts meant they were unable to capitalise on the event. This was disappointing because vendors spend a fortune on massive booths which was wasted.
Despite the strikes, there were plenty of highlights from the event, with there being many keynote speeches including one from former head of MI5 Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller.
There was also a presentation from Lieutenant General Tom Copinger-Symes, deputy commander of the UK strategic command, with one also being made by Nitin Natarajan, deputy director at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Sessions were also held that covered best practice in areas ranging from ransomware response (Trend Micro) and SaaS security (Canonic Security), to investigating and disrupting cybercrime (Microsoft) and threat detection using log management (CrowdStrike).
Nicole Mills, exhibition director at Infosecurity Group, said: “The theme we selected for Infosecurity Europe 2022 was ‘Stronger Together’, and we’ve seen this philosophy brought to life countless time over the last three days.
“The cybersecurity industry must become more collaborative in its efforts to keep society safe and secure, and our visitors grasped every opportunity to do just that – from networking events to roundtable discussions, and from on-stand meetings to informal offsite get-togethers.
“A quarter century on from the first event, Infosecurity Europe continues to play a vital role in bringing the infosec community together to do business, exchange knowledge, ideas and experiences, and learn from each other.”
