J. Kesavardhanan
CEO
Association of Anti Virus Asia Researchers (AVAR)

Welcome to AVAR 2021 Virtual! We are again gathering online this year as the pandemic continues to ebb and flow. We are much closer to defeating the coronavirus now than we were a year ago with mass vaccination programs underway across the world, and it is heartening to see humanity inching back to normal.

What has not changed since last year, however, is the acceleration in cyber threats. The world has transformed significantly and so has the cyber threat landscape. Threat actors are far more audacious than they were before, and their targets are also larger. We have seen cyber attacks threaten food and fuel supply by disrupting various stages of critical supply chains, and cybersecurity is now a critical national security concern.

AVAR 2021 Virtual has chosen ‘Cybersecurity in Peril: The Changing State of Threat Actors’ as its theme against this backdrop of escalating cyber insecurity. The transformation in our digital culture has been accompanied by a transformation in cyber threats and the cyber security community needs to respond by re-examining our methods and strategies if we wish to be successful in securing the world.

AVAR firmly believes that knowledge sharing and collaboration are key factors in stemming the rising tide of cyber attacks. AVAR 2021 Virtual will gather the world’s foremost cyber security experts to examine the threats we face and discuss how the reliability of cyberspace can be maintained.

I look forward to your participation at AVAR 2021 Virtual and building a safer digital world together for all netizens.