Stefan Haselwanter

Stefan Haselwanter graduated from the University of Innsbruck in Austria with a Bachelor degree in Computer Science. He has been working as a security tester and developer for AV-Comparatives since 2016. His main work focuses on testing and assessing protection capabilities as well as other security-related aspects and features of security software for different platforms, documenting findings, and writing test report. Besides that, he closely works together with the AV-C developer team to continuously improve the in-house testing frameworks and systems.

Robert Neumann

Robert Neumann is the head of the Cyber Protection Operations Center at Acronis. Besides managing teams to counterbalance the fight against cybercriminals, he is focusing on various short and long-term research projects, ranging from small scale malicious campaigns through niche malware and file formats to in-depth investigations and threat actor attribution.

Robert is a long-time security researcher, working in IT – and especially in IT security – for most of his career. His previous experiences at companies such as Virusbuster, Sophos and Forcepoint enabled him to understand and respond to cybersecurity challenges on different levels.

Vanja Svajcer

Vanja Svajcer works as a Technical Leader at Cisco Talos. He is a security researcher with more than 20 years of experience in malware research and detection development. Prior to joining Talos, Vanja worked as a Principal Researcher for SophosLabs and led a Security Research Team at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Vanja enjoys tinkering with automated analysis systems, reversing binaries and analysing mobile malware. He thinks time spent scraping telemetry data to find indicators of new attacks is well worth the effort. He presented his work at conferences such as Virus Bulletin, RSA, CARO, AVAR, BalcCon and others.

In his free time, he is trying to improve his acoustic guitar skills and often plays basketball, which at his age is not a recommended activity

Righard Zwienenberg

Zwienenberg started dealing with computer viruses in 1988 after encountering the first virus problems at the Technical University of Delft. His interest thus kindled and studied virus behavior and presented solutions and detection schemes ever since. Initially starting as an independent consultant, in 1991 he co-founded CSE Ltd. In November 1995 Zwienenberg joined the Research and Development department of ThunderBYTE. In 1998 he joined the Norman Development team to work on the scanner engine. In 2005 Zwienenberg took the role of Chief Research Officer. After AMTSO – Anti Malware Testing Standards Organization – was formed, Zwienenberg was elected as president. He is serving on the board of AVAR and on the Technical Overview Board of the WildList. In 2011 Zwienenberg was looking for new opportunities and started as a Senior Research Fellow at ESET.  In April 2012 Zwienenberg stepped down as President of AMTSO to take the role as CTO and later as CEO. In 2016 he rejoined the AMTSO board for another two-year run. He also is the Vice Chair of the Executive Committee of IEEE ICSG. In 2018, Zwienenberg joined the Europol European Cyber Crime Center (EC3) Advisory Group as an ESET representative.

Zwienenberg has been a member of CARO since late 1991. He is a frequent speaker at conferences – among these Virus Bulletin, EICAR, AVAR, FIRST, APWG, RSA, InfoSec, SANS, CFET, ISOI, SANS Security Summits, IP Expo, Government Symposia, SCADA seminars, etc. – and general security seminars. His interests are not limited to malicious code but have broadened to include general cybersecurity issues and encryption technologies over the past years. 

Eddy Willems

Eddy Willems is a worldwide known cyber security expert from Belgium. He is a board member of 3 security industry organizations, EICAR, AVAR and LSEC, and is the resident Security Evangelist at G DATA Cyberdefense.

He became a founding member of EICAR in 1991, one of the world’s first security IT organizations. Over the years he has served in many extra roles in different security industry organizations. Several CERTs, press agencies, print and online publications and broadcasting media, for example CNN, use his advice regularly.  In October of 2013, he published his first book in Belgium and the Netherlands, entitled ‘Cybergevaar’ (Lannoo). A German translation followed afterwards and an English translation and update, Cyberdanger (Springer), was published in 2019. He is also co-author of the Dutch SF cyberthriller ‘Het Virus’ published in 2020. Eddy is a known inspiring speaker and is giving lectures and presentations (including TEDx) worldwide for a very diverse audience from children to experts.

Samir Mody

Samir Mody graduated from the University of Oxford in 2000 with a First-Class Masters degree in Chemical Engineering, Economics and Management. He spent over 9 years at Sophos UK, the final 3 as Threat Operations Manager of SophosLabs. Since August 2010 he has been running K7 Labs in Chennai, India. Samir has actively contributed to the IEEE Taggant System project and other industry collaborations such as AMTSO and CTA. He has co-authored and/or presented papers and participated in panel discussions at various international security conferences (EICAR, VB, AVAR). Samirs interests include reading (philosophy, politics, history, literature, and economics), sport and classical music.