36 degrees…and it got even hotter: The Perseus cyber summer party with young+restless

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In record-breaking temperatures (37 degrees!), Perseus celebrated an exuberant cybersecurity summer party above the rooftops of Berlin together with young+restless, the Bundesverband Mittelständische Wirtschaft (BVMW) and around 150 guests.

However, the state of development of cybersecurity in Germany leaves rather little reason to celebrate. In his keynote address, for example, the president of Cyber-Sicherheitsrat Deutschland e.V., Hans-Wilhelm Dünn, addressed the difficulties facing the IT security industry: “The ‘fight for talent’ is one of the greatest challenges.” He was critical of the contrast between the need for security in Internet use and the simultaneous unwillingness to comply with security standards: “No backup, no compassion!”

Preparedness for cyber emergencies, which should always include a backup of your data, was also a dominant theme in the panel discussion that followed on the status quo of cybersecurity in Germany. “In a cyber emergency, fast action and immediate initiation of relief measures are required – time quickly costs a lot of money in such cases,” said Perseus CEO Richard Renner, “especially since 80 percent of cyber attacks run through known vulnerabilities.” Despite awareness of security gaps in the IT system, these attacks initially go undetected. This opinion was also shared by Tabea Wilke, founder of Botswatch, who sees this as a major danger for medium-sized companies: “The attacks in the #CyberSecurity sector are invisible at first. It’s not like a house collapses or burns down.”

The impression of a lack of penetration of digital issues was also confirmed by a survey conducted by the online opinion research institute Civey during the presentation of the figure of the day: 81.6 of the surveyed percent think that society is not prepared enough for digitalization, according to Civey CEO Gerrit Richter.

However, the legal framework, such as the DSGVO, also poses major problems for small and medium-sized enterprises. Hans-Wilhelm Dünn does not see sufficient clarity in the IT security law here. Richard Renner sees this as the reason for uncertainty among companies, even a year after the GDPR came into force.

Despite the heated temperatures and the need to catch up in cybersecurity, the participants and the guests gathered for a barbecue on the roof terrace of the Fintech Hub H:32 and “pleasant 30 degrees” and discussed further.

Thanks go to our co-organizers from young+restless and Mekolab, the BVMW, the community stallholders, Wibicon Unternehmensberatung, Civey and the de:Hub initiative, which sponsored this event.