On Thursday, the 14th of July, we hosted a really special private, security-themed dinner for some of our fantastic customers.

The dinner was a great opportunity for everyone to catch up and enjoy some wonderful food, drinks and security conversations.

The venue was pretty cool too – more on that later.

We’ve been talking about security a lot lately

Earlier in the year we made quite a lot of noise about our new partnership with e2e-assure and it was great to have them with us on the night.

That partnership is in full swing now, and our combined skillsets have allowed us to give customers full peace of mind. That’s because they know threats are not only identified but dealt with quickly and effectively by someone who understands their business and their cloud environment.

Cyber security is one of the biggest and most complex challenges facing businesses right now. We’ve been speaking to loads of organisations about how to ensure their data is as safe as it possibly can be. It was these conversations that put us in the mood for something a bit different… and the venue delivered.

The Vault

What better place to host our London event than a venue synonymous with being secure – an actual bank vault at The Vault, Leadenhall. It was built by Edwin Lutyens in 1932 and we were actually able to eat in the original strong room for the Old Midland Bank, its walls still lined with safety deposit boxes.

It was a real reflection of London’s fortified history in finance and innovation.

We gained great new skills

For such a special event we wanted to make sure we had a really special speaker – and we certainly got that.

Suzanne Williams is an international hostage & kidnap negotiation expert. Sue has worked on some of the highest-profile and most dangerous hostage situations across the world.

It was great to learn from Sue about how to negotiate our way out of a hostage situation – although hopefully we won’t need to put it to practical use any time soon!

After listening to her stories, we also all walked away with some practical negotiation tips we can use in our day-to-day lives. Whether that’s negotiating within a work setting or at home with family – it was super interesting. There were plenty of questions too, which was great.

Suzanne even managed to relate some of her experiences to the complex world of cyber threats and ransomware.

Cyber security insights on the night

In amongst the food, drink and hostage negotiation, we even found some time to share some cyber security insights ourselves. As well as the obvious difference, there were plenty of similarities in terms of the experience in the room, which led to fascinating discussions throughout.

Here’s what some of our customers had to say:

‘Awesome! A cyber security community can be created where we share information’.

‘Very well organised event’.

‘Really useful event, allowing us to discuss our security needs at a high level. Suzanne Williams was great and informative’.

When’s the next event?

We’re hosting a similar event in Glasgow this September at another fascinating venue which we’ll be revealing soon.

Below are some pictures from the night.