Security

Decrypt the complete Security Stage agenda at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023

Comment

A few months ago we introduced you to the brand new Security Stage, our debut space dedicated to cybersecurity at TechCrunch Disrupt.

Ahead of the big day, we’re excited to reveal what we have in store.

We’ve got a packed Security Stage agenda on September 21 featuring some of the sharpest minds and professionals in the industry discussing the biggest cybersecurity challenges today. There is a little something for everyone, and a lot we hope you’ll take away.

We will hear from hackers, front-line defenders and security researchers drawing on their firsthand knowledge and experience about the most critical threats and what can be done about them. Plus, you’ll find out how a tech giant works to keep billions of users safe, and you will meet the startups working to secure crypto, hardware and messaging for the masses.

We’ll dive into some of the pressing matters facing the world today, from the risks posed by nation-state spyware and the fight against ransomware to the global efforts to undermine encryption. And for the founder crowd, you’ll hear from industry giants who know what it takes to put security first.

TechCrunch Disrupt, our flagship startup event, returns to San Francisco on September 19–21, and we have a lot to talk about. We hope to see you there.

The Security Stage Agenda at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023

Live on Stage: TechCrunch’s Found Podcast

with Window Snyder (Thistle Technologies)

Join us for a live recording of Found, the TechCrunch podcast where we bring you the stories behind the startups. In this episode, we’ll talk to Thistle Technologies founder and chief executive Window Snyder about how she is building her company, raising money, and the highs and lows of entrepreneurship.

Signal and the Future of Encrypted Messaging

with Meredith Whittaker (Signal)

Signal is one of the most popular end-to-end encrypted messaging apps today. We’ll chat with Meredith Whittaker, Signal president and esteemed AI expert, to talk about the work that goes into sustaining a security startup, the dangers of data collection, and Signal’s efforts to resist governments working to weaken encryption; plus, an AI reality check.

Ransom-where? The U.S. Cities Fighting Back Against Hackers

with Allan Liska (Recorded Future), MK Palmore (Google Cloud)

Local governments are under siege by ransomware: More than 200 local governments, schools and hospitals were targeted by ransomware in 2022, costing the U.S. public sector hundreds of millions of dollars in downtime and damages. We’ll discuss how local governments and startups alike can fight back against the growing ransomware threat.

Navigating the Privacy Paradox with Meta’s Chief Privacy Officer

with Michel Protti (Meta)

Platforms like Facebook and Instagram were born out of the idea that our lives could be bigger and richer by sharing photos, life updates, opinions and funny memes with friends, family and new acquaintances. More recent regulations and consumer preferences have created a new set of challenges when it comes to how that actually works. Join us to hear how this is playing out for the mother of all social media companies, Meta.

Exploring the Insecurity of Things

with Amit Serper (Sternum) 

Smart home tech and internet-connected devices are all the rage, but security flaws plague the hardware space. Amit Serper, director of security research at Sternum IoT, is a skilled hacker with a track record of finding vulnerabilities and understanding what causes them. Join us for a crash course on what can — and does — go wrong, and how to do security right.

What It Takes to Keep Billions of Internet Users Safe

with Parisa Tabriz (Google)

Parisa Tabriz started as a hacker; now she’s known as Google’s “security princess,” tasked with protecting the data of billions of users around the world. Tabriz, who oversees Chrome browser security and Google’s security research team Project Zero, knows all there is to know about the complex world of web security. We’ll discuss what goes into keeping billions of users safe and how startups can be better prepared for the threats of tomorrow.

What We Can Learn from Cybersecurity Trash Fires

with Lesley Carhart (Dragos), Sherrod DeGrippo (Microsoft) and Rachel Tobac (SocialProof Security)

Hacks happen every day, and they can be highly embarrassing. But it’s the response, handling and aftermath that few ever forget and what can turn a cyber incident into a cyber disaster. You’ll hear from three of the sharpest hackers and security researchers in their fields about cybersecurity horror stories, with advice and guidance on how founders and startups can avoid making the same mistakes.

The Crypto World’s Cybersecurity Is a Disaster. How Can It Be Fixed?

with Marcus Carey (ReliaQuest), Jessy Irwin (Amulet) and Stephen Tong (Zellic)

In the last couple of years, hackers have stolen more than $4 billion in cryptocurrency from a seemingly endless list of web3 and blockchain projects. Is the crypto world inherently insecure or is it still in its early years? In this panel we will delve into what makes web3 more vulnerable to attacks than other tech sectors, and how it can be improved.

The Spyware Industry Is Out of Control. Now What?

with Marietje Schaake (Stanford University) and Bill Marczak (The Citizen Lab, University of Toronto)

For more than 10 years, researchers at organizations like The Citizen Lab and Amnesty International have exposed countless examples of governments all over the world using spyware made by Western companies to hack activists, journalists and dissidents. First there was Hacking Team and FinFisher, and now it’s NSO Group and a handful more. Can this industry operate legally and ethically? If not, what can we do to counter these abuses?

Disrupt 2023 runs September 19-21 in San Francisco. Buy your pass now! Seriously, what are you waiting for?

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

More TechCrunch

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Is it…

Tesla lobbies for Elon and Kia taps into the GenAI hype

Crowdaa is an app that allows non-developers to easily create and release apps on the mobile store. 

App developer Crowdaa raises €1.2M and plans a US expansion

Back in 2019, Canva, the wildly successful design tool, introduced what the company was calling an enterprise product, but in reality it was more geared towards teams than fulfilling true…

Canva launches a proper enterprise product — and they mean it this time

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 isn’t just an event for innovation; it’s a platform where your voice matters. With the Disrupt 2024 Audience Choice Program, you have the power to shape the…

2 days left to vote for Disrupt Audience Choice

The United States Department of Justice and 30 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, for alleged monopolistic practices. Live Nation and…

Ticketmaster is at the heart of a U.S. antitrust lawsuit against parent company Live Nation

The UK will shortly get its own rulebook for Big Tech, after peers in the House of Lords agreed Thursday afternoon to pass the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer bill…

‘Pro-competition’ rules for Big Tech make it through UK’s pre-election wash-up

Spotify’s addition of its AI DJ feature, which introduces personalized song selections to users, was the company’s first step into an AI future. Now, Spotify is developing an alternative version…

Spotify experiments with an AI DJ that speaks Spanish

Call Arc can help answer immediate and small questions, according to the company. 

Arc Search’s new Call Arc feature lets you ask questions by ‘making a phone call’

After multiple delays, Apple and the Paris area transportation authority rolled out support for Paris transit passes in Apple Wallet. It means that people can now use their iPhone or…

Paris transit passes now available in iPhone’s Wallet app

Redwood Materials, the battery recycling startup founded by former Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, will be recycling production scrap for batteries going into General Motors electric vehicles.  The company announced Thursday…

Redwood Materials is partnering with Ultium Cells to recycle GM’s EV battery scrap

A new startup called Auggie is aiming to give parents a single platform where they can shop for products and connect with each other. The company’s new app, which launched…

Auggie’s new app helps parents find community and shop

Andrej Safundzic, Alan Flores Lopez and Leo Mehr met in a class at Stanford focusing on ethics, public policy and technological change. Safundzic — speaking to TechCrunch — says that…

Lumos helps companies manage their employees’ identities — and access

Remark trains AI models on human product experts to create personas that can answer questions with the same style of their human counterparts.

Remark puts thousands of human product experts into AI form

ZeroPoint claims to have solved compression problems with hyper-fast, low-level memory compression that requires no real changes to the rest of the computing system.

ZeroPoint’s nanosecond-scale memory compression could tame power-hungry AI infrastructure

In 2021, Roi Ravhon, Asaf Liveanu and Yizhar Gilboa came together to found Finout, an enterprise-focused toolset to help manage and optimize cloud costs. (We covered the company’s launch out…

Finout lands cash to grow its cloud spend management platform

On the heels of raising $102 million earlier this year, Bugcrowd is making good on its promise to use some of that funding to make acquisitions to strengthen its security…

Bugcrowd, the crowdsourced white-hat hacker platform, acquires Informer to ramp up its security chops

Google is preparing to build what will be the first subsea fiber-optic cable connecting the continents of Africa and Australia. The news comes as the major cloud hyperscalers battle it…

Google to build first subsea fiber-optic cable connecting Africa with Australia

The Kia EV3 — the new all-electric compact SUV revealed Thursday — illustrates a growing appetite among global automakers to bring generative AI into their vehicles.  The automaker said the…

The new Kia EV3 will have an AI assistant with ChatGPT DNA

Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, was working improperly for several hours on Thursday in Europe. At first, we noticed it wasn’t possible to perform a web search at all. Now it…

Bing’s API was down, taking Microsoft Copilot, DuckDuckGo and ChatGPT’s web search feature down too

If you thought autonomous driving was just for cars, think again. The “autonomous navigation” market — where ships steer themselves guided by AI, resulting in fuel and time savings —…

Autonomous shipping startup Orca AI tops up with $23M led by OCV Partners and MizMaa Ventures

The best known mycoprotein is probably Quorn, a meat substitute that’s fast approaching its 40th birthday. But Finnish biotech startup Enifer is cooking up something even older: Its proprietary single-cell…

Meet the Finnish biotech startup bringing a long-lost mycoprotein to your plate

Silo, a Bay Area food supply chain startup, has hit a rough patch. TechCrunch has learned that the company on Tuesday laid off roughly 30% of its staff, or north…

Food supply chain software maker Silo lays off ~30% of staff amid M&A discussions

Featured Article

Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men

Meanwhile, women and people of color are disproportionately impacted by irresponsible AI.

20 hours ago
Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men

If you’ve ever wanted to apply to Y Combinator, here’s some inside scoop on how the iconic accelerator goes about choosing companies.

Garry Tan has revealed his ‘secret sauce’ for getting into Y Combinator

Indian ride-hailing startup BluSmart has started operating in Dubai, TechCrunch has exclusively learned and confirmed with its executive. The move to Dubai, which has been rumored for months, could help…

India’s BluSmart is testing its ride-hailing service in Dubai

Under the envisioned framework, both candidate and issue ads would be required to include an on-air and filed disclosure that AI-generated content was used.

FCC proposes all AI-generated content in political ads must be disclosed

Want to make a founder’s day, week, month, and possibly career? Refer them to Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2024! Applications close June 10 at 11:59 p.m. PT. TechCrunch’s Startup…

Refer a founder to Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2024

Social networking startup and X competitor Bluesky is officially launching DMs (direct messages), the company announced on Wednesday. Later, Bluesky plans to “fully support end-to-end encrypted messaging down the line,”…

Bluesky now has DMs

The perception in Silicon Valley is that every investor would love to be in business with Peter Thiel. But the venture capital fundraising environment has become so difficult that even…

Peter Thiel-founded Valar Ventures raised a $300 million fund, half the size of its last one