IT Security, Foosball and Charity: VB 2014 had it all

11/19/2014
G DATA Blog

The VB International conference is a worldwide institution when it comes to IT-Security and its 24th edition held some remarkable highlights. Technical and corporate audiences were able to follow high-class talks and presentations about threats and dangers the industry faces, possible solutions and questions to come – all held by professional security researchers. Besides, the community celebrated the 8th IT Security Table Football Championship with thrilling matches - and there were only winners.

IT Security

The presentations reached from technical descriptions, such as “Duping the machine - malware strategies, post sandbox detection” or “The three levels of exploit testing” over everyday concern topics and upcoming danger, such as “Attack points in health apps & wearable devices - how safe is your quantified self?” and “How I hacked my own house!“ to the presentation of innovative new technologies that might come in very handy in the future  fight against cybercrime, such as “Security analytics with 3D visualization engine” – to name only a very few. Check out the full VB2014 programme and also some of the presentation slides to get the full picture.
Nevertheless, being there, among international colleagues, also leads to many fruitful discussions outside the conference rooms in which many topics are raised and very often new paths for collaborations are found – all attendants, and there were as many as never before during this VB, are following the same goal: The professional fight against cybercrime!

Have a look at G DATA’s impressions from VB2014, captured in this cool video

Foosball and Charity

It has become a fine tradition to play the IT Security Table Football Championship, organized by G DATA, during the VB conferences. Its 8th edition since 2006, with only one year left out, was held among several competing teams from around the globe, who all ‘battled’ for the trophy… well… for a trophy substitution, because the original got stuck in NYC customs, along with all the team jerseys ;-) So, actually, from G DATA’s point of view, there was only one possible solution to this situation: “winning the trophy and bringing it home again”, to avoid further trouble with the customs in case the trophy needed to be sent to any other country. And, yes, they succeeded, after an exciting final match! Here are the results:

Champions: Team G DATA (Germany)
Vice-Champions: Team Malwarebytes (USA)
3rd Place: Team Microsoft (USA)
4th Place: Team Avast (Czech Republic)

But, as mentioned before, this VB conference and this tournament only had winners. After the conference, G DATA donated the entire booth equipment, including the foosball table and the tv, to a local charity organization taking care of homeless youth, YouthCare. We would like to express our gratitude once again, to…

… the organizers of Virus Bulletin for their additional donation of shirts and backpacks!
… the lovely guys from Triumph Expo, who transported all the goods to YouthCare, at no charge!

We hope that we can make this donation an annual tradition to support local charity organizations wherever an IT Security Table Football Championship will take place!