A Q&A with Conference Chair Luis Corrons about CARO 2022.

CARO Workshop is an independent annual gathering of cybersecurity experts, and this year, the event will be held by Avast. CARO 2022 will be taking place on May 4-6, 2022, in Brno, Czech Republic.

Read on as Luis Corrons, Conference Chair, Avast Security Evangelist, and a member of the AntiMalware Testing Standards Organization (AMTSO)’s Board of Directors, provides a preview of this year’s workshop.

Luis Corrons

What is the history of CARO Workshop?

In 2007, a conference organized by EICAR that usually took place every year was suddenly canceled. By that time, CARO had already existed as an organization for many years. Friðrik Skúlason, CARO member and founder of FRISK Software, organized the International Antivirus Testing Workshop, an event in Iceland that later became known as CARO Workshop 2007, the first annual occurrence of CARO Workshop.

This event not only gave birth to the annual CARO Workshops that we know today — it also included some meetings around testing that eventually led to the 2008 creation of AMTSO, the cybersecurity industry’s testing standard community.

Since when has the workshop been taking place?

CARO Workshop has been taking place every year since 2007 — that is, until Covid showed up. In 2020, it had to be canceled (although a virtual event was still held). The event was also canceled in 2021, so this year’s event will be the first in-person workshop to take place since the onset of the pandemic.

What makes this workshop different from other conferences and events?

Quite a few things. Usually, these types of conferences are open to anyone willing to register. This is not the case for CARO, which is a closed conference specifically dedicated to computer security research and cybercrime fighting. At the event, security researchers and law enforcement can share information in a closed environment. There’s a limited number of seats available, and the company organizing the workshop needs to vet all participants, who must be approved before you are able to register. 

What’s more, CARO Workshop participants talk about sensitive topics, sometimes even about actual law enforcement investigations. The only way to do this is to make sure that information doesn’t leave the premises of the event. For this reason, it’s forbidden to take pictures, videos, or use social media during the workshop.

Why has Avast decided to organize this year’s event? What are some of the challenges of organizing a conference in the midst of Covid?

We first proposed Avast to organize the CARO Workshop back in 2019. Avast Co-Founder Pavel Baudis is a CARO member, so we were especially eager to organize it.

Regarding the organization of an event in the midst of Covid: Put simply, it’s a challenge. To give you a more concrete idea of what I mean, when we started organizing it, Covid’s Omicron variant didn't yet exist. Throughout the event’s organization, we’ve kept the pandemic in mind and have chosen to work with venues with more capacity than the actual maximum number of participants, organize social events with open spaces, and so on. 

What is the topic of this year’s workshop?

This year’s theme is “Hunting threats, hunting criminals”. We’re really excited as this year’s agenda is excellent. For one, Nicole Samantha van der Meulen, Senior Strategic Analyst at the European Cybercrime Centre at EUROPOL, will be delivering the opening keynote. What’s more, we have a great lineup of speakers who will be diving into the latest threats and related investigations. You can explore the full list of speakers within the event’s agenda.

Finally, where and when will the next CARO Workshop be taking place?

We will be announcing these details at the end of the workshop — stay tuned!

The registration for CARO Workshop 2022 is open now. Please send us your interest in attending the conference by email to [email protected]. First, the organizer will vet all registrations. After the registration is approved, the applicant will receive a link to the ticket purchase system.