Luxembourg Internet Days 2017: Cyber Security the largest Threat

The Luxembourg Commercial Internet Exchange (LU-CIX) presented the 2017 edition of Luxembourg Internet Days on 14 and 15 November 2017 at the Chambre de Commerce with an emphasis this year on Digitalisation (day 1) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on day 2 - a DDoS attack is a cyber attack where a huge number of requests are sent through a network from many different sources to slow down or completely halt normal network traffic.

Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and LU-CIX Chairman Marco Houwen were among a host of presenters at the event which saw once again in excess of 1,000 delegates attend the two day conference and exhibition. In his address Marco Houwen emphasised the inextricable link between digitalisation and security and announced a free DDoS blackholing service for LU-CIX members (this is where a particular node that is suffering a DDoS attack can be isolated from the rest of the network, thus localising the problem). He also announced that the LU-CIX internet backbone had reached a new traffic record of over 100 mbps, a significant landmark which continues to keep Luxembourg near the top of the global internet charts.

Following him, Prime Minister Bettel spoke passionately about the advantages of Luxembourg. He referenced the Treaty of London which saw the walls protecting Luxembourg come down, and how this was the turning point from a poor country to the vibrant state that we are today. He spoke of the pride that the Luxembourg population can have in their culture, and also the openness that allows them to embrace change and communicate in so many languages. He also humorously suggested that, as it is such an unknown language, Luxembourgish could be an excellent security language, as well as mentioning that he particularly liked the picture of him that was used as the backdrop because it was at least 10 kilos ago!

One of his most telling observations on the times in which we are living came when he admitted that he was more afraid of external cyber threats than external military threats.

As well as the presentations, panel discussions and seminars there was an exhibition. This year, as an early sign of the CETA agreement bearing fruit, Canada, and particularly the province of Quebec, was present as a partner country, and many firms were represented from well established brands such as Blackberry, to innovative startups like Syngrafii, founded by five time Booker Prize nominated Canadian author Margaret Atwood and which provides a simple solution to remote signing and tracking of documents.