Mons, Belgium, September 10, 2012 — NIKSUN® Inc., the world leader in real-time and forensics-based cybersecurity and network monitoring solutions, is pleased to announce the company’s participation in the 2012 NATO Information Assurance Symposium (NIAS), in which Dr. Parag Pruthi, NIKSUN’s Founder and CEO has been invited to give an industry keynote. The NATO IA Symposium 2012, being held at SHAPE Headquarters in Mons, Belgium September 10th-14th, is the largest Information Assurance event in the NATO calendar, providing an opportunity for senior NATO IA Staff, NATO Nations IA leaders and leading Industry IA providers to develop industry best practice solutions for NATO use. Attendance is expected to exceed over 800 delegates and up to 70 exhibitors.

Amid a number of security experts and notable speakers, Dr. Parag Pruthi will address the NATO delegates at 10:00 am Thursday, September 13th, speaking on the newest technologies that address new age threats.  Despite extensive spends in cybersecurity, significant breaches are being reported daily. While some breaches are still due to lack of basic security practices, a number of breaches leading to large scale cyber espionage and financial damage are the results of sophisticated techniques employed by well financed cyber criminals. Dr. Pruthi’s thesis is that traditional tools and methods do not provide the right context and information to combat such attacks. His presentation will discuss traditional cyber defense tools and techniques while highlighting their weaknesses. A case will be made for novel technologies necessary to address the ever growing threat vectors. New technologies and paradigms and efficient strategies that are proving effective against sophisticated advanced persistent threats, trojans, botnets, and worms will be discussed.

At NIAS 2012, NIKSUN will also be showcasing its latest NetDetector Alpine 4.2.1 that makes a strong leap forward in addressing a number of shortcomings in security solutions. Notably, a unified solution embodied in the Alpine 4.2.1 release of NetDetector will be demonstrated highlighting the effectiveness of the solution in rapidly identifying and blocking malware, advanced persistent threats, botnets, spoofs, etc in a holistic manner.

The importance of cybersecurity and comprehensive cyber defense strategies has become paramount. The Director of the United States National Security Agency and Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, General Keith Alexander’s assessment of the USA prepardness for a serious cyber attack on critical infrastructure on a scale of 1 to 10, "From my perspective I'd say around a 3." In Britain, the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, said the agency was battling "astonishing" levels of cyberattacks on UK industry and he warned that Internet "vulnerabilities" were being exploited by criminals as well as states. In June of this year, MI5 stated that a foreign state-sponsored cyber attack against the computer systems of an unnamed British company had cost it over 1.2 billion dollars in lost potential revenues.  Jamie Shea, Nato’s Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges has stated, “Clearly, in the future all conflicts are going to involve people trying to disrupt information technology systems, which are not only necessary for communication, but also for the operation of highly sophisticated weapons systems, most of which these days are computer driven.”

“Cyber warfare is costly. The amount of money costing companies and governments from even a minor data breach is staggering,” said Dr. Parag Pruthi. “Every day millions of dollars are spent recovering from data breaches that could have been avoided with the proper security solutions and know-how.”

The NATO Information Assurance Symposium is an annual event among senior NATO IA Staff, NATO nations IA leaders, and leading industry IA providers to develop industry best practice solutions for NATO use. Building on previous successes, this year's NATO IA Symposium will be the largest yet, bringing together more than 1000 NATO and industry delegates to discuss innovative ways of meeting NATO's IA requirements.

For more information about NIKSUN’s uniquely powerful and scalable cybersecurity and network performance solutions, visit NIKSUN's website at www.niksun.com