As you’ll probably be able to tell from my slew of St. Petersburg-themed posts of late (architecture tour, rooftop tour, bucking Bronka tour, Kronstadt tour) – our week in the northern capital was a busy, action-packed one. But it wasn’t over just yet. Still to come was a Cyber Immunity conference followed by a nocturnal boat excursion along the city’s canals and Neva River. In this post, I’ll go over the former…

Secure by design software development – it’s a real buzz-term of late: everyone’s on about it, especially in North America and Europe. And everyone keeps insisting that it’s really needed – but no one goes on to say quite how. Meanwhile in northwest Moscow…

We’ve long been using the term “secure by design” – not merely as an empty catchword with little substance to back it up, but together with detailed instructions for implementing it – including at our conferences on all things secure-by-design. And just the other week we put on our latest such conference – up in St. Petersburg, and which we now call… ->

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Still sticking around St. Petersburg, we saw it was time for a scene change. So we chose the forts of Kronstadt, since – to my shame – I’d never been and didn’t even know much about them, including their history. Thus, it was time for some Kronstadt forts history catch-up…

Kronstadt is a port city on the tiny Kotlin Island in Neva Bay in the Gulf of Finland some 30 kilometers west of St. Petersburg – here. But the name Kronstadt is also given to the collection of historic forts in Neva Bay, including the few in Kronstadt. Most of the forts were constructed in the early to mid-1700s, and there were 22 at one point (some were later demolished). The first forts appeared during the Great Northern War. The reason why they were built was simple: to protect the northern capital from enemy navies.

I mentioned some were demolished; alas – others were simply abandoned and left to decay, not before they were looted. Today plenty of ruins remain – in among the shrubbery and trees that have grown up in the intervening centuries. But “ruins” doesn’t mean uninteresting; quite the contrary in fact. Accordingly, off we popped toward the forts of Kronstadt…

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Saint Petersburg walkabout – done.

Saint Petersburg roof-about – done.

Next up, Port Bronka (here) – the new, modern (i.e., deep enough for modern monster-sized ships) port of the city (not to be confused with the nearby older Great Port of St. Petersburg), which happens to be a customer of ours (for all things cybersecurity, naturally) and with which we have a great relationship…

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Our guided walking-tour of St. Pete started out great. But things were about to be taken to the next level – literally! Rooftops, here we come. But first – a surprise: turns out most of the roofs are wooden (on the inside, under some tin sheeting)! ->

I have to say I wasn’t expecting this; from afar things like a lot more modern. Never mind. The main thing – the views from the roofs, not the (inner) roofs themselves.

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And now – for one of my favorite tourisms: a city walkabout! Even better – the city is St. Petersburg! Better still – with a wonderfully entertaining tour guide! Even better yet – the itinerary of sights and sounds around the city was interestingly unusual!…

All righty; off we pop!…

So what can I say? Well, I’ll start off by saying that Saint Petersburg in the summer is simply… sainted! Perhaps the most convincing imperial “capital” (it was the capital of the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire) of Europe, if not the world.

But, as often happens, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the beginning – of our guided stroll. First place of interest: the Rimsky-Korsakov Monument ->

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One evening while browsing the internet and reading various blogs, I came across the revelations of a middle-aged businessman. He wrote how, outwardly, he was a successful, wealthy family-man – all good, supposedly; however, suddenly he lost all interest in work and life in general. Nothing whatsoever gave him pleasure any more. He seemed to be living on auto-pilot: simply carrying out daily life-functions as if he were some kind of bio-robot.

And what made this curiously interesting for me was that I realized that something like it had happened to me a few times for short periods.

Fortunately in my case, I managed to get over these days/weeks of the blues. I wonder if the businessman did? I hope so. But maybe he was suffering from something more serious like professional burn-out or clinical depression. Regarding such conditions there’s no advice I could give as I’m no doctor or therapist; however, regarding mere spells of lethargy and impassivity – just feeling down in the doldrums for while – I think and hope that just maybe my musings in this regard (particularly: how I pulled through each time) may be of help to you, dear readers, in case you ever feel the same…

I’ve fallen into a state of apathy similar to what the businessman described three (+1) times in my adult (35+) years. But before I get onto the first, here’s a pic with me in tired, fed-up mode! ->

// Btw: the video version of these musings is here.

The first time

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Trumpets, drum roll, applause, cheering, whistling! Herewith, two bits of news for you: one good, the other – even better!…

First: this year we’ll be having our 15^th annual cybersecurity conference – the Security Analyst Summit (SAS). Fifteen? Oh my gone-where-has-the-time?!

Second: We’re finally back to an offline, aka – in-person, aka – face-to-face format, just like old times!

// In recent years this conference and indeed many others have been online.

Our tradition of annually bringing together top cybersecurity experts, academics and business folks from all around the world in a warm and pleasant location began way back in 2009. (Blimey – 2009 seems like yesterday; it’s a full 14 years ago!) Back then it was a lot smaller in size, but over the years it’s grown gradually to become one of the key yearly fixtures on the global cybersecurity-event calendar.

// For those who might want to review how SAS has developed over the years, check this tag out.

This year the warm and pleasant location will be Phuket in Thailand, where the conference will run from October 25 to 27. As usual we’ll be presenting, sharing and discussing the latest trends in cybersecurity (including recently uncovered APT attacks) plus cutting-edge achievements in the field of research and technology.

Spoiler: emphasis will be placed on the following topics:

• Protection of industrial infrastructure;
• ICS/OT security;
• Supply-chain and IoT attacks;
• Methods for tackling ransomware and the darknet;
• The unveiling of our new training course in reverse engineering and Ghidra – presented by our GReAT.

And we’ve already announced the call for papers! If you want to present your ground-breaking research or innovational solution, enter the respective info on the site…

So there you have it folks – SAS 2023: approaching fast. It’s going to be GReAT, it’s going to be interesting, it’s going to be super-informative, it’s going to be a super-success – as always!…

See you in Phuket!…

In closing – a quick SAS photo-retrospective…

Greetings folks!

The other day I visited a most curiously interesting place – and it didn’t take a plane to get me there! Practically on my doorstep – Moscow’s Cryptography Museum, here. And I was reeaally impressed, to say the least: well thought-out, well laid-out, modern/futuristic-looking, and not just for math boffins – accessible for most everyone. In short – an amazing museum. Highly recommended!…

All things cryptography are exhibited at the museum: from ancient coding kit, via the later pre-digital systems, and through to today’s latest cryptographic systems…

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We had our Global Partner Conference 2023 the other week. And, getting ahead of myself, let me tell you it was a great success!…

Our global partner conferences are one of the most important regular business events for us. They’re where we tell our partner companies (distributors, system integrators, service providers, and so on) from all over the world how our products and services are developing, and how those products and services can help their customers solve the most difficult aspects of cybersecurity all the more. In turn, our partners share with us how their business is growing and changing, what’s happening in their regional markets, what they want more of, and what their customers dream of. Then it’s back to us to tell them what we envision they’ll be wanting in a year’s time, in two years’ time, and in five. And it all looks something like this:

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It’s been long. It’s been winding. But finally, the (Nepalese) South Base Camp is no longer a long and winding way away: it’s just around the corner! After spending our last night on the trek in spartan surroundings in Gorakshep, we were up and out for our final push to the SBC!…

But once out of our lodgings, I couldn’t quite fathom the eager wonder expressed in the faces of my fellow trekkers. I couldn’t fathom it out since the weather was absolument merde (pardon my French). Ok, so the snow was falling from behind – but we had to come back down again later that day!…

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