ISC2 East of England Chapter: When Cyber Gets Physical & Planning for Q Day

Join the ISC2 East of England Chapter for an evening looking at two areas where the security landscape is shifting fast the growing overlap between IT and operational technology, and the coming change to the cryptography that protects almost everything we do online.

Both talks are aimed at security professionals of all backgrounds. You don’t need to be an OT engineer or a quantum physicist to get a lot out of the evening. There’ll be time for questions after each session, and plenty of chance to catch up with fellow members. The event is free, and ISC2 members can claim CPE credits for attending.

Talk 1: When Cyber Gets Physical: OT Security for IT Security People
James Beamish and Aaron Thacker

Operational technology is no longer an isolated world of mysterious controllers and proprietary protocols. Factory floors, power systems, ships, buildings and transport networks increasingly depend on familiar IT components, remote access, cloud services and third-party connectivity. However, the consequences of compromise are very different. Drawing on real, anonymised testing across industrial and safety-critical environments, this talk explains the essential differences between IT and OT, introduces PLCs, HMIs, SCADA and field devices without drowning the audience in engineering terminology, and shows how ordinary weaknesses such as poor segmentation, forgotten remote access, default credentials and misplaced trust can become operational and safety risks.

Talk 2: Planning for Q Day - Post-Quantum Cryptography
Neil Breden

A quantum computer isn’t simply a more powerful computer - it’s a different kind of machine, and it changes the rules for the encryption we rely on every day. This talk explains in plain terms how quantum computing works, why it threatens the public-key cryptography behind HTTPS, VPNs, PKI and digital signatures, and why the risk is already here. Adversaries are capturing encrypted data today in the expectation they can decrypt it later - “harvest now, decrypt later” - which puts anything with a long shelf life, such as health, defence and citizen identity data, firmly in scope.

Neil Breden - MBCS CITP, CISSP, ChCSP. Neil is a Principal Security Architect at Cognizant, working across UK government and critical national infrastructure, and President of the ISC2 East of England Chapter. He has briefed senior government technology leaders on the quantum threat and how to prepare for it.

About the ISC2 East of England Chapter

We’re a community of cyber security professionals across the East of England, bringing members together to share knowledge, build connections and support each other’s development. Events are open to ISC2 members and non-members alike.