Written by Thomas Philipp Haas
For the first time, it-sa was held in Halls 7 and 7A and Congress@it-sa in the modern NürnbergConvention Center Ost, which is directly adjacent to the exhibition. This year, the annual conference of the IT security officers of the federal states and municipalities was once again a highlight of the congress events at it-sa. On the eve of the trade fair, Albert Füracker, Bavarian State Minister of Finance and Regional Identity, hosted a state reception.
The trade fair participants agreed on the growing importance of cyber security. Figures presented by Bitkom at the opening press conference show that spending on IT security in Germany has risen continuously and a further increase in investments in corresponding hardware, software and services is to be expected. For 2021, Bitkom estimates spending at 6.2 billion euros, which is 9.7 percent more than in the last record year of 2020. Bitkom puts the expected growth for the next five years at an average of 9.5 percent. At the European level, however, the prioritisation of IT security in individual countries is far apart, ECSO Secretary General Luiggi Rebuffi points out in an interview.
Knowledge transfer traditionally also takes place at it-sa in the open forums, which have become real crowd-pullers. Three Knowledge Forums and the International Forum with English-language contributions offered information from the areas of "Cloud & Mobile Security", "Data Center Security & Identity and Acess Management", "Management & Compliance" and "Network&Application Security" with over 130 contributions, including the product-neutral it-sa insights. One of the highlights of the supporting programme was the special keynote by AI expert Hans-Christian ("Chris") Boos. He appealed to his audience to be aware of the responsibility in the development of AI-based security tools - humans are still decisive here. Recordings of the entire it-sa 2021 forum programme will remain available free of charge to registered users of it-sa 365 after the show.
The ever-present threat of ransomware was a major topic at it-sa 2021, but technical innovations were also hotly debated. In order to make the popular cloud solutions for companies more secure, IT security providers are taking new approaches:
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) promises additional protection against external threats, be it malware-infested websites or malware downloads. To achieve this, control is shifted from on-premise web gateways to a SASE provider in the cloud. This combines the control of website calls with a firewall, malware filters or access regulations. In a particularly distinctive form, web calls are rendered in the SASE cloud and only transmitted to the user as an image.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is an extension of the technology known as Endpoint Detection and Response (DER). The aim is to use the cloud to automate the analysis of incidents more strongly, to better map interrelationships across clients and to be able to implement measures more efficiently.
Live during it-sa and still available on it-sa 365: Remo, the rolling robot, visited companies at their stands to learn about their IT security solutions - and provides his very "personal" perspective on the trade fair events.
The young company XignSys from Gelsenkirchen has set itself the goal of replacing the password with an innovative authentication solution. This year's winning start-up received the UP@itsa Award at it-sa 2021 for its technology, which is characterised by particular user-friendliness.
