Frank Porschmann, senior vice president of Deutsche Messe, the organizer of the CeBIT trade show, talks about next year’s main exhibition themes during a press conference at the Park Hyatt Hotel in downtown Seoul, Wednesday. / Korea Times

By Kim Yoo-chul

Next year’s CeBIT will highlight cyber security as the technology fair’s top issue, said a senior executive from the show’s organizing committee.

CeBIT is the world’s biggest trade exhibition showcasing digital information technology and telecommunications. The 2012 CeBIT exhibition will run from March 6 to 12 in Hannover, Germany.

``Last year’s top issue at the fair was cloud services, however, this year’s theme is `managing trust’ because we believe trust and security are more than important to governments, consumers and companies amid the era of digitalization,’’ said Frank Porschmann, senior vice president of Deutsche Messe.

Deutsche Messe is the organizer of the CeBIT exhibition and the executive expects the upcoming event to inspire revenue growth.

``We have our business model, which is different from the International Consumer Electronics Show (ICES) in Las Vegas and IFA trade fair in Germany. With four platforms _ pro, gov, life and lab _ CeBIT will try to yield visible results for cyber security-related issues,’’ the executive said in a press conference with local media at a Seoul hotel, Wednesday.

``Legal and management issues, secure communication, data security, mobile security, trust in cloud services, cybercrime and privacy are to be the main themes.’’

There is no question that cloud computing is the top word in the entire IT industry. It’s been considered the next big thing.

It has already, become an attractive option for businesses as a convenient and cost-effective measure for data storage and applications.

Analysts and industry watchers say cloud computing will definitely be more popular in the future. But like all new things, there are still a few threats such as security.

Because data can be stored in a remote location, cloud computing users can log in to access it and this makes systems vulnerable to cyber-attacks and data breaches.

If users’ data is stored along with that of other companies on one server, it may be possible for a hacker to gain access to all the data information by targeting the one server.

``That’s why risk management in cloud computing should be advanced. With greater `managing trust,’ between solutions and applications, the global economy will see a faster growth, ,’’ Porschmann told reporters.

``The CeBIT Security World will exhibit various digital security systems and detailed applications,’’ he added.

During the conference, the executive said some 100 Korean companies will be at the upcoming CeBIT with Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor division having a booth, as well as IBM, Dell, Google, Microsoft and Intel.

Porschmann also said the show’s organizer is aiming to surpass last year’s performance, without elaborating further. Some 340,000 visitors and 70,000 trade visitors from outside of Germany attended the exhibition last year.