Applying complex concepts such as game theory and static binary analysis to IT security solutions will be the focus of a major two-day conference being held in Trinity College beginning today.

The Source Dublin 2013 Conference will bring together security experts, academics and senior executives from across Europe and the US. "At a lot of these events you hear about all these new types of technology and a lot of theory," says Source founder Stacy Thayer. "For Source Dublin the focus is business uses for that technical content – we want to concentrate on practical applications for new technologies and new research."

Speakers will include Google cybersecurity guru Thomas Dullien (also known in the hacking community as 'Halvar Flake') and senior director of operations at Electronic Arts, Allison Miller.

The latter’s lecture will focus on how game theory can help security professionals decipher the “underlying system dynamics” which can help predict what cybercriminals are going to do, “and likewise, the strategies you should adopt in order to win” against them.

Dublin-based Brian Honan of BH Consulting is another speaker at the event, and he says the concepts Mills will be speaking about could also revolutionise security awareness training.

“The idea of ‘gamification’ is one of the ways that’s being looked at to see how we can make security more interesting and engaging to users. Rather than putting someone through a PowerPoint presentation and saying ‘viruses are bad’, using game theory provides a more engaging way to learn.”

Other Source Dublin 2013 topics include online payment fraud, distributed denial of service attacks, big data security and the use of reverse engineering to safeguard Android apps.

The event is the Source group’s first such gathering in Ireland, with its previous European conferences taking place in Barcelona since 2010.