One of the ASIS UK organisers Mike Hurst offers a personal view of the 2015 European gathering of the security management body ASIS, in Frankfurt.
A busy weekend all in all, starting with the ASIS UK Spring Seminar on the Thursday, Dublin on Friday to join the Irish Chapter celebrating their 21st anniversary at Facebook’s European HQ, before heading to Frankfurt for the main event, the ASIS International 14th European Security Conference & Exhibition.
With 500 attendees from 46 countries you would think that it’s easy to get lost in the crowd, but, I think that (probably) the best thing about these conferences is the positive and inclusive spirit amongst the delegates: everyone is pleased to talk and network.
Yes, there are great, expert speakers, brilliant networking and social events and exceptional keynote speakers, including the UK’s very own Prof Martin Gill, but that is only part of the picture.
After attending meetings of the European Advisory Council (I am a member) and another with the European Chapter leaders, we met up with most of the 60 or so Brits attending, with some of our international colleagues, for an brief soiree before heading to the Welcome Party – Powered by Nedap.
The importance of the event was underlined by the presence of the opening Key Note speaker Dr Thomas de Maizière, Federal Minister of the Interior of Germany (the equivalent of our Home Secretary, but without the leopard print shoes). The Minister gave a comprehensive overview of the security situation in particular for industry and introduced the economic security architecture in Germany, focusing on areas such as countermeasures against crime and espionage, also in cyberspace.
This was followed by a day of educational sessions on topics such as “the future of security technology”, “protecting soft targets from hard-line Terror”, “social media – how does policing respond to mass data in crisis” and “eliminating Syria’s chemical weapons – the security challenges for the OPCW”. My co-UK Vice Chairman, Graham Bassett and I gave a presentation on ‘Personal Branding and Career Development’ to 60 colleagues. In the evening we all gathered for the President’s Reception, hosted by ASIS President Dave Tyson CPP and sponsored by Tyco Integrated Fire & Security at the Palmengarten Gesellschaftshaus.
Day two was as good as day one and was closed by Axel Petri (pictured), SVP Group Security Governance at Deutsche Telekom AG, Germany, who spoke about the impact of the Snowden revelations on the telecoms industry and need to regain the trust of the consumer.
I also got a lot out of attending the sessions of CSO Roundtable Summit which ran alongside the main conference. The ASIS CSO Roundtable is the forum for the most senior security officers in some of the world’s leading organisations.
So where next? We are delighted to announce that in 2016, the 15th European Conference will be returning to London. Running from April 6 to 8, it will be the biggest and dare I say it, the best security education and networking event of the year. The Call for Papers is already out www.asisonline.org/london and we hope to have a huge number of abstracts to consider when we meet in October: we had 140 submissions in 2012. We look forward to working inclusively with friends, colleagues and media partners from across the profession and from all security organisations to make the event a huge success, because if we do, the security profession and society will be the real winners.
See you there!
About ASIS International:
Founded in 1955, ASIS International (ASIS) is the US-based organisation for professionals responsible for security, with more than 38,000 members worldwide. Visit www.asisonline.org.
