My Kamchatka-2021 chronicles resemble a tourist guidebook already! And since that’s the case, I simply couldn’t not include the wonderful Nalychevo Nature Park, which is a stone’s throw from… the city, and, as such, can easily be recommended as a tourist’s first Kamchatka experience after flying in for the first time. Why else? Because it has a bit of everything: beautiful volcanoes; hot springs you can bath in; boiling, bubbling, gurgling muddy pools; and hissing, steaming – stinking! – bright yellow fumaroles. Besides, the tourist infrastructure of the park is pretty civilized – paths, cabins, and even as far back as 2006 distance posts appeared along tracks and wooden bridges were built over the streams.

The park features natural beauties such as this one:

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As promised, herewith, my big announcement!…

But first, some background…

Nearly 12 years ago – in 2010, a youngish, green-colored company became a partner of a legendary global red-colored brand with more than 80 years of history to its name (incidentally, by doing so paving the way to other companies in the cybersecurity sphere).

In the intervening 11 years, both the worlds of cyberthreats and Formula-1 have changed tremendously. In the cyberworld, alas, things have changed for the worse. For example, cyberthreats to physical equipment ceased being the stuff of sci-fi and Hollywood blockbuster movies, to become real – daily – risks for organizations and businesses. That’s one reason why, since 2013, we’ve been protecting all of Ferrari’s digital kit – some 5000+ devices: from the industrial equipment at its plant in Maranello, to the computers of the engineers and mechanics at the racetracks around the world!

For fans, Formula One is all about speed, adrenaline and emotions, and for the folks providing the speed, adrenaline and emotions F1 is mostly all about massive volumes of data transferred in real time between the racing cars, the team of engineers in the garage at the track, and company HQ. On average, from just one car for a single race up to 200 gigabytes of data is sent from 150 sensors all over the car – and on the driver: for example, his biometric data is transmitted from sensors in his gloves!

Protecting such vast amounts of data and intellectual property while maintaining the continuity of a multi-billion-dollar business demands – you guessed right! – the best cyber-protection in the world. Thus, I’m very happy to announce that this year we’ve signed an agreement on extending our partnership with the Scuderia Ferrari team, and one ‘feature’ of this agreement is that our logo on the nose of the red race cars will continue to cross the finish lines of the world’s best tracks! Hurray!

Read on: ‘Just like absinthe + Campari’ (mind-blowing:)

Finally, I made a long-overdue visit to Fiera Milano, the humungous, legendary fairground and exhibition center in Rho, on the outskirts of Milan. The occasion was the EICMA motorcycle trade show.

What really struck me about the place – just how massive it is. so I looked it up later – and yes, the stats back up my observations: turns out it’s the biggest exhibition center in Europe! ->

Incidentally, Expo 2015 took place here (I mention this as the world-expo topic was touched upon recently after I visited Expo 2020 in Dubai).

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I recall, quite some time ago, wondering why there are so many skyscrapers in large cities in the U.S.A., while in Europe – hardly any. Wait, no let me see – and delve (into my archives). Yes – I wondered it in Frankfurt, in 2017.

My question was answered with a reasoned reply: “just look at Tuscan cities, rather – how they once were, long ago”. I didn’t quite follow, and didn’t follow-up either back then. And having just been to Bologna, (which is almost Tuscany – just outside it), I was still further perplexed since I sure didn’t see a Bolognhattan; only a few medieval skyscrapers:

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The ‘chainsmoking’ volcano on the horizon behind yesterday’s Semyachik is the volcano called Karymsky. And it’s the most active of all of Kamchatka’s volcanoes! That figures, since every time we view the crater at its peak, it always looks different. Here it is in the year 2006:

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I’ve already told you what a Kamchatkan mirage is, haven’t I? Briefly, again: it’s when a whole volcano can simply disappear. Oh yes. “But surely you mean just the peak of a volcano can ‘disappear’, say – in some mist or fog or in some low cloud, right?” some of you may understandably ask. Actually – no. Whole volcanoes. Whole, gigantic volcanoes! Like, these, for example, next to… ‘the city’:

“Which city is that?” you may also ask…

‘The city’ is in fact Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky – which used to be the only city in Kamchatka. All other settlements on the peninsula are smaller than city-size: like towns (today there are a further two: Yelizovo and Vilyuchinsk), villages, or even smaller. Since Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky was long the only city, it was – and still is, out of habit – referred to by all locals as simply ‘the city’: you never hear its full name uttered. So you hear things like: “I’m in the city”, or “I’ll meet you in the city”, or “there was a bear roaming the city this morning”! :)

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Still slithering down the Kamchatka peninsula this summer… next stop for us, some 50km to the southwest of the Valley of Geysers – the Maly Semyachik volcano:

En route – lush landscapes viewed out of the helicopter’s windows, mostly to the east:

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Onward – and further down toward the southern end of Kamchatka…

Kizimen and Kronotsky volcanoes – duly observed; the gurgling of Uzon caldera – duly whiffed!

Next, the Valley of Geysers – another unique natural feature: a valley of hissing, steaming and bubbling water (& volcanism). Moreover – hissing, steaming and bubbling over a large area:

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Ten years is a long time in cybersecurity. If we could have seen a decade into the future in 2011 just how far cybersecurity technologies have come on by 2022 – I’m sure no one would have believed it. Including me! Paradigms, theories, practices, products (anti-virus – what’s that?:) – everything’s been transformed and progressed beyond recognition.

At the same time, no matter how far we’ve progressed – and despite the hollow promises of artificial intelligence miracles and assorted other quasi-cybersecurity hype – today we’re still faced with the same, classic problems we had 10 years ago in industrial cybersecurity:

How to protect data from non-friendly eyes and having unsanctioned changes made to it, all the while preserving the continuity of business processes?

Indeed, protecting confidentiality, integrity and accessibility still make up the daily toil of most all cybersecurity professionals.

No matter where it goes, ‘digital’ always takes with it the same few fundamental problems. ANd ‘go’ digital will – always – because the advantages of digitalization are so obvious. Even such seemingly conservative fields like industrial machine building, oil refining, transportation or energy have been heavily digitalized for years already. All well and good, but is it all secure?

With digital, the effectiveness of business grows in leaps and bounds. On the other hand, all that is digital can be – and is – hacked, and there are a great many examples of this in the industrial field. There’s a great temptation to fully embrace all things digital – to reap all its benefits; however, it needs to be done in a way that isn’t agonizingly painful (read – with business processes getting interrupted). And this is where our new(ish) special painkiller can help – our KISG 100 (Kaspersky IoT Secure Gateway).

This tiny box (RRP – a little over €1000) is installed between industrial equipment (further – ‘machinery’) and the server that receives various signals from this equipment. The data in these signals varies – on productivity, system failures, resource usage, levels of vibration, measurements of CO₂/NO_x emissions, and a whole load of others – and it’s all needed to get the overall picture of the production process and to be able to then take well-informed, reasoned business decisions.

As you can see, the box is small, but it sure is powerful too. One crucial functionality is that it only allows ‘permitted’ data to be transferred. It also allows data transmission strictly in just one direction. Thus, KISG 100 can intercept a whole hodge-podge of attacks: man-in-the-middle, man-in-the-cloud, DDoS attacks, and many more of the internet-based threats that just keep on coming at us in these ‘roaring’ digital times.

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Straight after London and our Thames Pathing and Mitre-staying, we headed over the Irish Sea to Dublin, where the IRISS-CERT conference was taking place. For those for whom that abbreviation is a new one, coming up is brief info. For those who came only for the Guinness – you’ll need to scroll down this post a bit!…

CERT = computer emergency response team: a group of highly-qualified experts who collect information about incidents of a certain kind in the IT field, and also their classification and neutralization. // We have a CERT in the company, btw, which deals with cybersecurity problems of industrial systems.

IRISS-CERT = Ireland’s national CERT. Therefore -> we’re friends with them and help them out – because only together can we fight cyber-villainy effectively!

The event was a modest one, but oh-such an interesting one. I took to the stage and did my customary ‘cyber-standup’ act, where I tell of serious things about serious cyber-problems, yet still the audience laughs – a lot ). Well, why not? Serious – yes; but who – ever – wants a PowerPoint sleepathon?

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