The is­sue of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty will fea­ture as a stand alone ses­sion in the up­com­ing an­nu­al Health, Safe­ty, Se­cu­ri­ty and En­vi­ron­ment (HSSE) Con­fer­ence & Ex­hi­bi­tion host­ed by the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Am­cham T&T) this year.

“An ex­cit­ing fea­ture of this year’s edi­tion of the Con­fer­ence is a sep­a­rate Cy­ber Track Con­fer­ence that high­lights cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is­sues. While cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty has been fea­tured dur­ing the HSSE Con­fer­ence in pre­vi­ous years, this is the first time that Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty as a top­ic will be fea­tured as a stand-alone and in­de­pen­dent ses­sion from the tra­di­tion­al HSE ses­sions of the con­fer­ence,” Am­cham stat­ed in a re­lease.

Ac­cord­ing to Am­cham this de­ci­sion came be­cause of the in­creased cy­ber-at­tacks both glob­al­ly and lo­cal­ly in the re­cent past.

“Even as our world leans more in­to tech­nol­o­gy, we can­not ig­nore the threat that ex­ists from the ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties of hack­ers and oth­er cy­ber­crim­i­nals,” Am­cham’s CEO Ni­rad Tewarie said.

”A dig­i­tal world re­quires us to pro­tect our da­ta and keep our peo­ple safe to avoid dis­rup­tion to our lives and busi­ness­es. AM­CHAM T&T sees this as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring to­geth­er in­flu­en­tial ex­perts in cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty who can de­liv­er so­lu­tions to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce and, hope­ful­ly, elim­i­nate cy­ber risks that many com­pa­nies face to­day,” Tewarie stat­ed.

Tewarie said that Am­cham is com­mit­ted to strength­en­ing cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty pre­pared­ness and re­silience with­in the pri­vate sec­tor of T&T.

“Re­cent cy­ber at­tacks on lo­cal com­pa­nies have shown how this threat­ens our op­er­a­tions and af­fects do­ing busi­ness in T&T. There­fore, it is im­por­tant for every com­pa­ny want­i­ng to stay com­pet­i­tive in this dig­i­tal age to en­sure that they are in­vest­ing in strength­en­ing their cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty frame­works to achieve crit­i­cal cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty out­comes,” he said.

Am­cham said in an at­tempt to de­sign a prac­ti­cal, ac­tion­able agen­da, it com­piled a team of in­flu­en­tial lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts who will analyse the fu­ture of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty risk man­age­ment, high­light the top five el­e­ments of an ef­fec­tive cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty pro­gram, as­cer­tain how com­pa­nies can ef­fec­tive­ly use their re­sources to achieve cy­ber re­silience, and as­sess their risk score­cards.

Am­cham said lead­ing the dis­cus­sions on these is­sues will be Robert Dyson, Part­ner - Glob­al OT/IoT Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Busi­ness Leader at IBM who will be one of the Fea­tured Speak­ers at the Cy­ber Se­cu­ri­ty Con­fer­ence.

“These ses­sions are meant to in­crease aware­ness of the se­ri­ous threats posed by cy­ber crim­i­nals who are ac­tive­ly seek­ing to dis­man­tle or work around in­ter­nal con­trols with­out de­tec­tion to cor­rupt im­por­tant com­pa­ny files or steal or delete da­ta stored by com­pa­nies,” it stat­ed.

.These ses­sions will be con­duct­ed by Ri­car­do Mar­tinez, Chief Rev­enue Of­fi­cer & Matthew Green, Di­rec­tor of Cy­ber Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices, Dig­i­tal Era Group

Am­cham’s 26th An­nu­al HSSE Con­fer­ence & Ex­hi­bi­tion is sched­uled to take place from No­vem­ber 1 to No­vem­ber 3 at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port of Spain.

It will be the first time in two years that par­tic­i­pants will be al­lowed to at­tend the Con­fer­ence and Ex­hi­bi­tion in per­son, while a vir­tu­al au­di­ence will be able to view all of the Con­fer­ence ses­sions via the event on­line plat­form.

This year the theme “RE-Imag­in­ing HSSE” will ex­plore new per­spec­tives on HSSE poli­cies and process­es by em­brac­ing in­no­va­tion, ap­ply­ing new tools and tech­niques, and trans­form­ing busi­ness mod­els and gov­er­nance to cre­ate a cul­ture of safe­ty through­out com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in the pri­vate sec­tor.

“It’s not that we are ask­ing com­pa­nies to change all of the process­es and sys­tems which have worked so well for com­pa­nies in the past,”Tewarie said.

“What we are ask­ing is that lead­ers and pro­fes­sion­als re-imag­ine is how we can utilise HSE poli­cies for a world that is al­ways evolv­ing to re­main ahead of the curve and, as much as pos­si­ble, fu­ture-proof our sys­tems and op­er­a­tions from prob­lems that may im­pact our lives and busi­ness­es.”