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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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Trend Micro Restores Essential Systems for Banijay Benelux Within Days of a Ransomware Attack
Banijay Benelux, a part of the Banijay media brand, produces and distributes popular television programs across the Netherlands and Belgium. In 2020, its business was brought to a sudden halt during a ransomware attack. AWS Partner Trend Micro quickly stepped in to prevent damage from spreading, then implemented new security precautions.
"Trend Micro instantly had the right tools to protect and to monitor specific areas. To do that without affecting performance or creating downtime was really impressive."
Leon Backbier Manager of IT, Banijay Benelux
Leveraging the Right Team’s Expertise to Address Ransomware Attack
Banijay Benelux—an Amsterdam-based company founded in 2020 and part of the Banijay Group television production and distribution business—develops sports programs, reality shows, and dramas such as Big Brother, Expeditie Robinson, and Penoza. It relies on AWS to support human resources, invoicing, and other business-critical tasks.
In early November 2020, Leon Backbier, manager of IT for Banijay Benelux, was awakened by a pre-dawn phone call from a colleague in the UK: a ransomware attack was targeting the company’s cloud infrastructure. Backbier and his team contacted long-term AWS Partner Trend Micro, which at the time managed on-site endpoints—but not cloud—security for Banijay Benelux, and asked for help.
Trend Micro quickly began working to minimize the attack’s scope, strengthen the company’s cloud security, and remediate and rebuild the affected servers. Over the next few months, Trend Micro would continue to monitor Banijay Benelux’s AWS infrastructure for additional threats, while also restoring the damaged infrastructure. Today, it provides the company with 24/7 managed cloud security.
"I’m feeling quite confident. I’m sleeping well every night again, because Trend Micro is watching over us. I can have an 8-hour sleep again."
Leon Backbier Manager of IT, Banijay Benelux
Essential Systems Restored Within 3-4 Days
Banijay Benelux refused to pay the attackers’ ransom and Backbier’s team members found that every server they tried to access was immediately encrypted. Within hours, Trend Micro was working to mitigate damage.
Trend Micro started by examining traffic logs and installing hardware to secure the company’s network. It also installed monitoring software to track activity across Banijay Benelux’s AWS environment, which included over 20 servers. “They instantly had the right tools to protect and to monitor specific areas,” says Backbier. “To do that without affecting performance or creating downtime was really impressive.”
Next, Trend Micro began working to rebuild the handful of servers that had been damaged by the ransomware. The first step was to use a script that automatically installed Trend Cloud One—a cloud security platform created specifically for those building on AWS—the moment the team spun up a new instance of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) to replace a damaged server. This allowed Banijay Benelux to restore essential business systems within a few days of the attack. “In 3–4 days, we had the most vital systems running so we were able to access our bookkeeping,” says Backbier. “We could pay salaries again.”
Trend Micro also searched the dark web for efforts to sell data stolen from the company. Fortunately, Banijay Benelux was able to secure its systems before losing any sensitive personal or confidential data that might have led to fines for violating the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Despite having to work remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trend Micro team met with Banijay Benelux three times a day to keep the company up to date on monitoring and recovery efforts. The security company also conducted an ongoing search for suspicious traffic to ensure that the hackers were no longer lurking.
Getting everything back to normal again took about 3 months. “We have production companies that organize a lot on Excel sheets and paper and that wasn’t affected that much,” Backbier says. “We lost the system where we do workflow for the invoices, so we had to do that by hand just to be able to pay creditors.”
Banijay Benelux had been in the process of implementing a new invoicing system at the time, so it accelerated that project rather than trying to rebuild the old system. As the weeks passed, the company gradually grew more confident that the hackers no longer had access to its infrastructure. “I felt completely confident after Christmas time—that gave me the feeling that we were in a good place,” Backbier recalls. Today, he adds, “I’m feeling quite confident. I’m sleeping well every night again, because Trend Micro is watching over us. I can have an 8-hour sleep again.”
By this point, Banijay Benelux had begun talking with Trend Micro about providing ongoing managed security services for its cloud infrastructure. “My IT team is rather small,” says Backbier. “You can’t have all the expertise compared to a company like Trend Micro. That’s its core business.”
Response Was the ‘Ultimate Proof of Concept’
Although organizations share a security responsibility in the cloud, they often require support to deliver it. As an AWS Level 1 Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP), Trend Micro has demonstrated the capacity to augment security teams’ resources with 24/7/365 managed detection, response, and support through its cloud security and XDR solutions and service teams. Today, Banijay Benelux has added confidence around its cloud security, thanks to Trend Micro’s 24/7 monitoring. It also knows that it has a partner that can jump in quickly to solve problems if a security incident develops. “I think what the hack proved was that they really can do what they promise—that gave me the feeling we made the right choice,” says Backbier. “That was the ultimate proof of concept for me.”
The ransomware incident also increased awareness at the company’s leadership level about the value of managed security. Now that it has a single dashboard to monitor security across its IT infrastructure, Banijay Benelux has deep and continual insights into its risk profile. “Security is high on everybody’s agenda,” says Backbier. “And that’s good.”
Kalman Tiboldi - CTO & Founder at GemOne-TVH - Simplify or Die: Why Complexity Is the Real IT Challenge
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Isabelle Droll - CIO for Airline, Corporate, Hotels & Resorts and Sustainability at TUI - Data, Diversity, and Destinations
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Sharon Prior - CIO in transition - How Great Tech Leadership Begins with Business Thinking
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José Antonio López, Group CIO at TOUS - Jewels, Data & AI: Inside the Digital Transformation of TOUS
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Tom Tanghe - General Manager ITC EMEA at Daikin Europe - Reinventing the CIO Role
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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.
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