What a year 2013 has been, for both the information security industry, and Infosecurity Magazine. This year we celebrated our 10th anniversary - happy birthday us - so I was expecting big things. And Snowden delivered. Thanks Edward.
I'm not going to write about the industry’s 2013 highlights - I'm sure I'd only be telling you what you already know, and instead I've commissioned one of our talented journalists to write a report detailing the highs and lows of 2013. It's interesting what we consider a high or a low in this industry, and they're often interchangeable. Take Mr Snowden for example. A definite 'low' for the NSA and intelligence services concerned, a debatable high for the industry vendors who have used the incident to market their products, and a definite high for Infosecurity Magazine's web traffic as we serve both the industry and the general public in reporting on this ongoing narrative.
I would, instead, like to use this blog to honour Infosecurity Magazine's tenth anniversary, by reporting on some of our very own highlights this year.
In January, we launched an information security hub on The Guardian's website, in partnership with FireEye. The hub is performing incredibly successfully and we've cherished the opportunity to bring our content to a wider, less niche, audience. I was personally honoured to have been approached and chosen by the Guardian to partner with them on this, and hope the masses are a little more educated about information security as a result.
Also in partnership with The Guardian, we ran our first breakfast roundtables, attracting CISOs and senior industry end-users. (We offer sponsorship of these industry round-tables, so please do get in touch if you're interested.)
This was also the first year of our BrightTalk webinar channel and we've had over 10,000 members register in less than a year. In fact, this year alone, Infosecurity members have spent 13,268 hours viewing our webinar content.
Our digital programmes have flourished elsewhere too, with our incredibly successful webinar weeks and virtual conferences achieving record attendance. Our latest winter VC was attended by 5000 people and a further 2500 registered for our webinar week. These statistics are unrivalled in the industry and are testament to the quality of content and speakers that we secure for these events.
Our Twitter 'voice' is now travelling further than ever before, and we look set to reach 35,000 followers by the new year. #amazing
We also collected a few more awards for our trophy cabinet this year, picking up a BT journalism award for best investigative feature, and three of our writers picked up awards too. I also travelled to Scottsdale, Arizona, to attend the EWF event and was honoured to be presented with an influential women in technology award in the category 'one to watch'. I guess I'll have to be on my best behaviour!
In December, the Infosecurity portfolio launched the Leadership Summit, a one-day invite-only conference for CISOs. I opened the event with an on-stage interview with NSA's Andy Archibald, who was wonderfully honest and informative.
Finally, we published our tenth anniversary edition of the magazine in November. It was my favourite ever front cover, and I took delight in looking through all of the past editions of the magazine to dig out some of the best covers and content highlights (70% of which I have been present for!)
So, it has been an eventful and very successful year for the Infosecurity Magazine team. It's the perfect opportunity for me to thank the whole team - our best team yet - for their hard work and energy this year. Drew, Becca, Carlos, Malcolm, Ben, David, Greg, Vicky, Joy, Claire, Ray, Kata, Kevin, Tara and Stephen. And of course, Edward Snowden. My last thank-you, but somewhat most important, goes to our loyal readers. This year, you've watched more webinars, attended more virtual conferences, viewed more news stories, and read more magazines than ever before. I love your loyalty and your thirst for all things infosecurity.
A very happy Christmas to you all. Bring on 2014.
Eleanor Dallaway, Editor