-2.png)
Kalman Tiboldi - CTO & Founder at GemOne-TVH - Simplify or Die: Why Complexity Is the Real IT Challenge
Italy Sep 25, 2025 Invitation Only Physical italian
Nel percorso verso l’AI e la trasformazione digitale, dati e automazione sono gli elementi centrali di ogni strategia tecnologica. Ma senza una governance chiara, rischiano di diventare non solo fonte di inefficienza, ma anche di rischi e incoerenza. Come garantire che i dati siano completi, accessibili e affidabili? Come automatizzare le operation IT e i processi aziendali mantenendo controllo, compliance e sicurezza? Durante questa roundtable esclusiva, organizzata da CIONET Italia e IBM, affronteremo: La governance come abilitatore di dati affidabili e automazione sicura. Come prepararsi a un’adozione dell’AI realmente scalabile. Il ruolo di controllo, resilienza e gestione del rischio nell’innovazione.
Read More
Belgium Oct 16, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english
AI isn’t just another tool. It changes how we work, how we think, how we organise ourselves.Yet most organisations still approach it like a digital upgrade, deploying assistants, automating workflows, testing use cases inisolation.The results are predictable. Short-term wins. Long-term confusion.Effort spent. Value unclear.Many companies can’t connect AI to their actual strategic goals,and the promised ROI never materialises.At the same time, something deeper is shifting.AI can now reason, decide, adapt. Not just mimic processes butcontribute to them.The technology is evolving, but the way we implement it hasn’tcaught up.If your AI still fits inside a single department, you’re likely solvingthe wrong problem.If it works only for individuals, you're missing how your teamsactually deliver value.If it replaces people instead of supporting them, you're buildingfor today, not tomorrow.The next step isn’t more AI. It’s the right AI.Built for your business, your teams, your way of working.Not a tool to add but a structure to build around.Are we ready to treat AI as a shared capability, not a scatteredexperiment?Can we move beyond individual efficiency and build systems thatcollaborate, learn and adapt with us?Those are the questions we’ll explore at the round table.
Read More
Germany Oct 28, 2025 Country Members Physical german
Am 28. Oktober lädt CIONET CIOs und Digital Leaders nach Köln ein: hier stellen wir reale Anwendungsfälle vor, in denen KI-Agenten Aufgaben autonom übernehmen, Prozesse beschleunigen und Entscheidungen vorbereiten – mit messbarem Nutzen für das Business.
Read More
France Nov 4, 2025 Country Members Physical french
À l’ère des mutations géopolitiques et réglementaires, l’établissement d’une souveraineté numérique est devenu un élément stratégique essentiel pour les entreprises. Ce dialogue stratégique mettra en lumière le rôle fondamental du réseau dans la mise en place du contrôle, de la confiance et de la résilience. Nous explorerons comment une infrastructure moderne et résiliente permet d’appliquer des politiques de gestion des données et d’assurer la continuité opérationnelle. Ce dialogue stratégique, réservé à un groupe restreint de pairs, est conçu pour permettre aux leaders du numérique d’échanger sur l’un des enjeux les plus urgents aujourd’hui. Nous discuterons des réseaux « sovereign-ready » et débattrons des préoccupations croissantes autour de la souveraineté des données, qui motivent l’adoption de politiques de confidentialité et de protection des données de plus en plus strictes à l’échelle mondiale.
Read More
Netherlands Nov 10, 2025 Public Physical english
CIONET Nederland vertrekt met een groep Nederlandse CIO's en digital leaders 10 t/m 12 november 2025 voor de geheel verzorgde CIO Innovation Trip naar de Web Summit in Lissabon, Portugal. Reis jij mee of neem je collega(s) mee!
Read More
National Railway Company of Belgium takes a security-focused route with Microsoft Security solutions
The National Railway Company of Belgium prioritizes customer safety and travel experience along with cutting-edge technology. And because cybersecurity is ever more important, it protects its digital assets with both built-in platform security and Microsoft Security solutions.
SNCB is part of Belgium’s critical infrastructure. Making sure that our passengers can depend on constant service availability and enjoy their experience is always our priority. We trust Microsoft technologies as our tools for building cybersecurity resilience.Paul Standaert: CISO Security Operations Team Lead - National Railway Company of Belgium
The National Railway Company of Belgium (SNCB) epitomizes the word “challenge.” After nearly a century in operation, the company plies a network of 6,399 kilometers of mainline tracks and carries more than 250 million passengers a year. That rapidly increasing passenger group is the company’s highest priority, so ensuring the railway’s availability and safety is paramount. Keeping everything on the rails takes hard work by the company’s more than 20,000 employees, a mix of knowledge workers and frontline workers in stations and on trains.
Securing the critical infrastructure of a vibrant transportation company in today’s era of heightened cybersecurity risk requires vigilance over a complex environment. Consider the size of that task: 3,000 assets in the SNCB’s datacenter, devices for 8,000 knowledge workers, and a plethora of other endpoints for about 12,000 frontline workers using multiple devices in a high-availability setting. A five-person incident response team manages that fast-paced environment, which is relentlessly assaulted by malicious hackers. That’s why SNCB turned to Microsoft Security solutions for a coordinated approach to securing devices and data.
When SNCB began its modernization journey, it adopted a security-forward cloud option: Microsoft Azure. “Microsoft is the clear front-runner in the cloud marketplace,” says Bouke Stijns, Chief Information Security Manager at the National Railway Company of Belgium. “Google and Amazon still have a long way to go to match the performance that Azure offers, and we trust Microsoft’s diligent security with our data.” Adds Paul Standaert, CISO Security Operations Team Lead at the National Railway Company of Belgium, “The connected security solutions that Microsoft provides to support its cloud capabilities were a major incentive for our choice of Azure.”
The company deployed Microsoft Defender for Cloud to protect its cloud workloads and rolled out Microsoft Defender for Office 365 to protect the productivity apps that its knowledge workers use. With the company’s cloud journey well underway and proactive cybersecurity its perennial watchword, SNCB revisited its choice of security information and event management (SIEM) solution.
Until 2020, SNCB’s SIEM was QRadar. “We wanted a SIEM that would better integrate with all of the security tools in our environment,” says Standaert. Working with SNCB’s external security partner, his team deployed Microsoft Sentinel. “When we adopted Microsoft Sentinel, we gained full visibility over our environment and consolidated vendors,” he continues.
SNCB needed the most efficient tool it could find to optimize its small security team. “Our team needed a centralized tool to afford visibility throughout our entire estate,” explains Standaert. “We adopted Microsoft Sentinel so that we could manage our landscape on one console. Now we can compile a historical record to make correlations between diverse types of information.”
The company’s incident response team and forensic analysts needed a simple way to query threat data. Because the Microsoft query language (Kusto Query Language, or KQL) is intuitive and fast to learn, new team members can write simple queries which they can combine for more complex issues. “That’s vital when we have to correlate events in the moment,” says Standaert. “No matter which Microsoft solution our cybersecurity team members are using, they only need to know KQL.” Finding new team members also became somewhat easier after SNCB adopted Microsoft Sentinel. “It’s not easy to find cybersecurity experts, but most of them have Microsoft Security solution experience,” adds Standaert. “Onboarding new employees and upskilling them is faster than using another tool set or requiring them to learn how to use multiple tools.”
SNCB’s next stop was to help secure and seamlessly manage 33,000 diverse devices. The company’s frontline workers operate in a highly mobile, fluid environment that demands immediate responsiveness. Train conductors and drivers might use multiple devices. Replacing the hand signals and whistles of the past, conductors at most stations use smartphones and smartwatches to communicate with train drivers, signaling that all doors are closed and it’s safe to depart, for example. Drivers use lightweight tablet devices to stay on top of the most recent procedures and safety measures.
The company easily manages more than 21,000 devices with Microsoft Intune. “Intune is a huge success story for SNCB,” says Stijns. His team fully containerizes SNCB applications on smartphones so that the company can’t access employees’ personal apps and data. He also appreciates that compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is built into Microsoft solutions and the Microsoft licensing model, which optimizes the IT budget in an industry that allocates resources to passenger experience rather than IT expenditure. “Our Microsoft license offers an extensive set of security solutions that optimizes budget and reduces the number of vendors we need to coordinate with,” he explains.
The company covers about 12,000 endpoints throughout its environment with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. “We gained greater control over our endpoints, and we continue to expand that more granular management,” says Stijns. The resulting interoperability with the company’s other Microsoft solutions—Microsoft 365 and its on-premises identities in Windows Server Active Directory, in addition to Intune—illuminated the advantages of using a coordinated tool set. “Because we use Microsoft Sentinel connected with Defender, we’re ready to respond quickly in case of a security event,” adds Standaert.
Just as SNCB trains are always running, the company’s IT team never rests. It’s well into its digital transformation roadmap and is now laying the groundwork for an upcoming enterprise resource planning system rollout, which will coordinate data with Microsoft Security solutions.
Although Stijns and Standaert are occupied with the behind-the-scenes complexities of running a vast IT landscape, they never forget the people who depend on the company’s services. “SNCB is part of Belgium’s critical infrastructure. Making sure that our passengers can depend on constant service availability and enjoy their experience is always our priority,” reiterates Stijns. “We trust Microsoft technologies as our tools for building cybersecurity resilience.”
Kalman Tiboldi - CTO & Founder at GemOne-TVH - Simplify or Die: Why Complexity Is the Real IT Challenge
.png)
Isabelle Droll - CIO for Airline, Corporate, Hotels & Resorts and Sustainability at TUI - Data, Diversity, and Destinations
.png)
Sharon Prior - CIO in transition - How Great Tech Leadership Begins with Business Thinking
-1.jpg)
José Antonio López, Group CIO at TOUS - Jewels, Data & AI: Inside the Digital Transformation of TOUS
.png)
Tom Tanghe - General Manager ITC EMEA at Daikin Europe - Reinventing the CIO Role
.jpg)
CIOFEST 2025 - From Order Taker to Proactive Disruptor
Geopolitical tensions have dominated the headlines for over two years now. In this context, the cyber threat landscape is also evolving rapidly. The protection and security of critical infrastructure – both physical and digital – is becoming increasingly important.
.png?width=600&height=600&name=Anna%20Kopp%20(1).png)
