To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the VB conference, the organization set out to honor some of the most influential security researchers of the past decade. The VB2010 Awards included six categories: greatest contribution to the anti-malware industry, greatest contribution to the anti-spam industry, best educator in the anti-malware industry, most innovative idea in the anti-malware/anti-spam industry, lifetime achievement, and, finally, best newcomer.

Guillaume Lovet, senior manager, threat response team for FortiGuard Labs and technical editor of the FortiGuard blog, was nominated as best newcomer. Lovet has been making significant strides in security research and has made an indelible mark on the security industry over the last 10 years. He’s presented memorable research at several VB conferences, including:

• VB2006: Dirty Money on the Wires: The Business Models of Cybercriminals
• VB2007: Menace 2 the Wires: Advances in the Business Models of Cybercriminals
• VB2009: Fighting Cybercrime: Technical, Juridical and Ethical Challenges

Lovet’s efforts pioneered research into cybercrime business models, as he was at the forefront of analyzing the virus scene’s transition from glory to monetization before the change skyrocketed in 2004.

Lovet has also presented at HackCon, EICAR, AVAR and Black Hat, and was nominated with co-presenter Haifei Li for the pwnie awards for “most innovative research” at Black Hat in 2010.

Congratulations, Guillaume. We’re glad to have you on our team.

At next week’s Virus Bulletin VB2009 conference in Geneva, four members of the FortiGuard Global Security Research Team will be among the experts sharing their expertise on the topic of anti-malware. This is the fourth consecutive year that members of Fortinet’s seasoned research team have been on the roster of the event, which is in its 19th year.

Only 38 of more than 160 proposals were selected by the VB2009 committee for this year’s conference program. That said, here are the presentations to check out:

• “Fighting cybercrime: technical, juridical and ethical challenges,” Wednesday, September 23, 4:20 p.m. Speaker: Guillaume Lovet, Threat Response senior manager.
• “‘I am not a numero!’: assessing global security threat levels,” Thursday, September 24, 10:40 a.m. Speaker: Bryan Lu, FortiGuard project manager.
• “The hackpacker guide: an in-depth look into custom run-time packers,” Thursday, September 24, 5:00 p.m. Speaker: Xu Yang, FortiGuard project manager.
• “Botnet-powered SQL injection attacks: a deeper look within” Thursday, September 24, 4:20 p.m. Speakers: David Maciejak, IPS analyst, and Guillaume Lovet.

Will you attend VB2009?