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

Line Man Wongnai, an on-demand food delivery service in Thailand, is considering an initial public offering on a Thai exchange or the U.S. in 2025.

Thai food delivery app Line Man Wongnai weighs IPO in Thailand, US in 2025

The problem is not the media, but the message.

Apple’s ‘Crush’ ad is disgusting

Ever wonder why conversational AI like ChatGPT says “Sorry, I can’t do that” or some other polite refusal? OpenAI is offering a limited look at the reasoning behind its own…

OpenAI offers a peek behind the curtain of its AI’s secret instructions

The federal government agency responsible for granting patents and trademarks is alerting thousands of filers whose private addresses were exposed following a second data spill in as many years. The…

US Patent and Trademark Office confirms another leak of filers’ address data

As part of an investigation into people involved in the pro-independence movement in Catalonia, the Spanish police obtained information from the encrypted services Wire and Proton, which helped the authorities…

Encrypted services Apple, Proton and Wire helped Spanish police identify activist

Match Group, the company that owns several dating apps, including Tinder and Hinge, released its first-quarter earnings report on Tuesday, which shows that Tinder’s paying user base has decreased for…

Match looks to Hinge as Tinder fails

Private social networking is making a comeback. Gratitude Plus, a startup that aims to shift social media in a more positive direction, is expanding its wellness-focused, personal reflections journal to…

Gratitude Plus makes social networking positive, private and personal

With venture totals slipping year-over-year in key markets like the United States, and concern that venture firms themselves are struggling to raise more capital, founders might be worried. After all,…

Can AI help founders fundraise more quickly and easily?

Google has found a way to bring a variation of its clever “Circle to Search” gesture to iPhone users. The new interaction, launched in January, allows Android users to search…

Google brings a variation on ‘Circle to Search’ to iPhone users

A new sculpture going live on Wednesday in the Flatiron South Public Plaza in New York is not your typical artwork. It combines technology, sociology, anthropology and art to let…

Always-on video portal lets people in NYC and Dublin interact in real time

Apple’s iPad event had a lot to like. New iPads with new chips and new sizes, a new Apple Pencil, and even some software updates. If you are a big…

TechCrunch Minute: When did iPads get as expensive as MacBooks?

Autonomous, AI-based players are coming to a gaming experience near you, and a new startup, Altera, is joining the fray to build this new guard of AI agents. The company announced…

Bye-bye bots: Altera’s game-playing AI agents get backing from Eric Schmidt

Google DeepMind has taken the wraps off a new version of AlphaFold, their transformative machine learning model that predicts the shape and behavior of proteins. AlphaFold 3 is not only…

Google DeepMind debuts huge AlphaFold update and free proteomics-as-a-service web app

Uber plans to deliver more perks to Uber One members, like member-exclusive events, in a bid to gain more revenue through subscriptions.  “You will see more member-exclusives coming up where…

Uber promises member exclusives as Uber One passes $1B run-rate

We’ve all seen them. The inspector with a clipboard, walking around a building, ticking off the last time the fire extinguishers were checked, or if all the lights are working.…

Checkfirst raises $1.5M pre-seed to apply AI to remote inspections and audits

Close to a decade ago, brothers Aviv and Matteo Shapira co-founded a company, Replay, that created a video format for 360-degree replays — the sorts of replays that have become…

Controversial drone company Xtend leans into defense with new $40 million round

Usually, when something starts to rot, it gets pitched in the trash. But Joanne Rodriguez wants to turn the concept of rot on its head by growing fungus on trash…

Mycocycle uses mushrooms to upcycle old tires and construction waste

Monzo has raised another £150 million ($190 million), as the challenger bank looks to expand its presence internationally — particularly in the U.S. The new round comes just two months…

UK challenger bank Monzo nabs another $190M as US expansion beckons

iRobot has announced the successor to longtime CEO, Colin Angle. Gary Cohen, who previous held chief executive role at Timex and Qualitor Automotive, will be heading up the company, marking a major…

iRobot names former Timex head Gary Cohen as CEO

Reddit — now a publicly-traded company with more scrutiny on revenue growth — is putting a big focus on boosting its international audience, starting with francophones. In their first-ever earnings…

Reddit tests automatic, whole-site translation into French using LLM-based AI

Mushrooms continue to be a big area for alternative proteins. Canada-based Maia Farms recently raised $1.7 million to develop a blend of mushroom and plant-based protein using biomass fermentation. There’s…

Meati Foods bites into another $100M amid growth to 7,000 retail locations

Cleaning the outside of buildings is a dirty job, and it’s also dangerous. Lucid Bots came on the scene in 2018 with its Sherpa line of drones to clean windows…

Lucid Bots secures $9M for drones to clean more than your windows

High interest rates and financial pressures make it more important than ever for finance teams to have a better handle on their cash flow, and several startups are hoping to…

Israeli startup Panax raises a $10M Series A for its AI-driven cash flow management platform

The European Union has deepened the investigation of Elon Musk-owned social network, X, that it opened back in December under the bloc’s online governance and content moderation rulebook, the Digital Services Act…

EU grills Elon Musk’s X about content moderation and deepfake risks

For the founders of Atlan, a data governance startup, data has always been at the heart of what they do, even before they launched the company. In fact, co-founders Prukalpa…

Atlan scores $105M for its data control plane, as LLMs boost importance of data

It is estimated that about 2 billion people, especially those in lower and middle-income countries, lack access to quality and affordable essential medicines. The situation is exacerbated by low-quality or even killer…

Axmed raises $2M from Founderful to streamline drug supply chains in underserved markets

For decades, the Global Positioning System (GPS) has maintained a de facto monopoly on positioning, navigation and timing, because it’s cheap and already integrated into billions of devices around the…

Xona Space Systems closes $19M Series A to build out ultra-accurate GPS alternative

Bankruptcy lawyers representing customers impacted by the dramatic crash of cryptocurrency exchange FTX 17 months ago say that the vast majority of victims will receive their money back — plus interest. The…

FTX crypto fraud victims to get their money back — plus interest

On Wednesday, Google launched its digital wallet in India with local integrations, nearly two years after the app was relaunched as a digital wallet platform in the U.S. As TechCrunch exclusively reported last month,…

Google Wallet is now available in India

Bluesky has launched a new product roadmap for the coming months. The decentralized social network said on Tuesday that it is planning to introduce direct messages, support for videos, improved…

Bluesky to add DMs, video support and in-app custom feed curation