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CIONET - What's next

Connecting ambitious digital leaders and businesses around the globe.

Catch up on the upcoming CIONET Events

             
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Germany Sep 9, 2025 Country Members Physical german

Frankfurt: AI Driven Logistics

Vom ersten Use Case zur strategischen Neuausrichtung CIONET lädt bereits zum vierten Mal zu einem exklusiven Roundtable für CIOs und Digitalverantwortliche aus Logistik und Handel ein. Im Mittelpunkt des Abends steht die Frage, wie Unternehmen ihre KI-Initiativen erfolgreich skalieren und aus ersten Use Cases echten strategischen Mehrwert schaffen. Microsoft 365 für Frontline Worker: Moderne Tools, die Mitarbeitende im Tagesgeschäft entlasten ServiceNow für Prozessintegration: Automatisierte End-to-End-Workflows – vom Schadensfall bis zur Retourenabwicklung KI-gestützte Disposition und Planung: Mit smarten Algorithmen zur optimierten Supply Chain Digitale Lieferketten und letzte Meile: Transparenz, Effizienz und Kundenzentrierung durchgängig gedacht

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Belgium Sep 13, 2025 All Members Physical english

CIONET Cycling Event

Join us for a wonderful ride. The ride is accessible to all levels of riders and doesn't require extensive technical skills. More information will follow soon. Looking forward to ride together!

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Germany Sep 17, 2025 Country Members Physical german

München: Cyber Security Fatigue

Cybersecurity ist längst kein reines IT-Thema mehr – sie betrifft das gesamte Unternehmen. Doch während die Bedrohungslage zunimmt, geraten viele Security-Verantwortliche an ihre Belastungsgrenzen: zwischen 24/7-Verantwortung, wachsenden Anforderungen und dem ständigen Innovationsdruck.

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Germany Sep 17, 2025 Country Members Physical german

Köln: CIO & CISO, das Rezilienz-Power-Duo

IT-Betrieb und Cybersicherheit stehen heute unter extremem Druck: steigende Komplexität, wachsende regulatorische Anforderungen (NIS2, DORA, KRITIS), chronische Ressourcenknappheit – und gleichzeitig eine Bedrohungslage, die keine Verzögerungen duldet. Trotzdem agieren viele IT- und Security-Teams noch immer in Silos. Die Folge: ineffiziente Abläufe, Tool-Wildwuchs, langsame Reaktion auf Vorfälle und unklare Verantwortlichkeiten.

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Germany Sep 18, 2025 Country Members Virtual german

Online: Nachhaltige IT - CIDO Priorität

Nachhaltigkeit ist für CIOs nicht nur ein „Nice-to-have“, sondern eine strategische Priorität – sie beeinflusst direkt die finanzielle Performance, die operative Effizienz und die langfristige Wettbewerbsfähigkeit.

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Belgium Sep 18, 2025 Country Members Physical french

Les Rencontres: La dette technique : Un défi stratégique pour les entreprises

La dette technique est comparable à la négligence des réparations d'une maison. Ignorer un toit qui fuit peut faire gagner du temps aujourd'hui, mais cela pourrait conduire à l'effondrement du plafond plus tard. Pour remédier à la dette technique, il faut trouver et réparer ces fuites dès maintenant et mettre en place un plan d'entretien de la maison afin qu'elle soit prête pour les extensions futures. Pour résoudre ces problèmes, il faut définir des priorités stratégiques, communiquer clairement avec les parties prenantes et établir une feuille de route à long terme pour la modernisation. Cet événement se déroulera entièrement en français.

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Recent Cases

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Thumbay Group reinforces Cybersecurity with Trend Micro

The Thumbay Group, a leading healthcare conglomerate in the UAE, faced escalating cybersecurity threats in an increasingly digitalized healthcare landscape. Trend Micro's comprehensive cybersecurity suite emerged as the ideal choice, enabling the Thumbay Group to fortify its security posture and safeguard its critical operations.

OVERVIEW

The Thumbay Group was established in 1998 by Dr. Thumbay Moideen, founder president, and is an international business conglomerate with a strong focus in the healthcare field, based in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Thumbay Group includes 46 pharmacies, eight hospitals, and one university hospital, along with medical research, diagnostics, health communication, wellness, laboratories, and nutrition.

The Thumbay Group’s Network of Academic Hospitals, the constituent teaching hospitals of Gulf Medical University, is one of the largest in the UAE, with patients from more than 175 countries. Gulf Medical University has students from 86 nationalities, as well as faculty and staff from 50 different countries.

 

With threats against the UAE’s healthcare industry increasing in volume and complexity, the Thumbay Group needed a centralized cybersecurity system that extended beyond the endpoints.

Akram Moideen Thumbay

Director of Thumbay Technologies

 
 

CHALLENGES

Despite progress in recent years, the healthcare industry is a prime target for cybercriminals seeking out protected health data and sensitive user information. The industry has been challenged by ransomware, malware, and phishing attacks, as well as vulnerabilities in the cloud.

Initially, the Thumbay Group only secured its endpoints, but as the organization advanced its digital transformation, security needed to keep up. The Thumbay Group needed a centralized system that expanded beyond the endpoint to prevent new and more complex threats and vulnerability exploits. With all of the entities under the umbrella of the Thumbay Group being interconnected, a compromise at a single point would threaten the entirety of the organization’s network.

“With threats against the UAE’s healthcare industry increasing in volume and complexity, the Thumbay Group needed a centralized cybersecurity system that extended beyond the endpoints,” says Akram Moideen Thumbay, director of Thumbay Technologies.

Due to its close relationship with the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) and the UAE’s Ministry of Health and Prevention, the organization is under the strict provision to conform to the IT regulations adopted by the nation’s healthcare industry. As well, the Thumbay Group must adhere to the Global Health Security Initiative (GHSI) standard, an internationally-recognized set of guidelines governing data security in healthcare.

The combination of a rapid change in policies by the UAE government and the advent of COVID-19 has led many healthcare providers to adopt technologies at a much faster rate than in previous years. Teleconsultation and the sharing of digital medical records externally have done wonders for the industry, however, as with most great change, there are risks—an expanded threat landscape.

 

Our security transformation with Trend Micro provided us with a 360-degree security approach, with real-time visibility, instant reports for meetings and compliance purposes, and quick distribution of updates and patches.

Akram Moideen Thumbay

Director of Thumbay Technologies

 
 

WHY TREND

After experiencing several hands-on demos and an all-inclusive proof of concept, the Thumbay Group was confident in Trend Micro’s industry-leading solutions, robust protection, and full-time support. Trend Micro’s level of threat detection proved far superior to the Thumbay Group’s legacy IT antivirus platform and other vendors.

From the outset, Trend Micro worked closely with the Thumbay Group’s IT division to identify the right solutions that would aid the organization in reinforcing its security posture. Trend Micro also conducted a systems health check across the entire network to pinpoint areas of concern.

In addition to delivering a superior package, Trend Micro’s offering fulfilled one of the Thumbay Group’s key requirements: A one-stop-shop solution with a 360-degree security approach. Proving infinitely more manageable than the legacy platform, Trend Micro’s solution have enabled the IT team to manage the entire spectrum of the group’s security from a single interface.

 
 

SOLUTION

The Thumbay Group adopted several Trend Micro solutions across endpoints, network, and data centers, leading with Trend Micro Apex One™. It’s unique, advanced endpoint protection platform provides the Thumbay Group with exceptional protection against an ever-growing variety of threats without compromising performance and effectiveness.

In addition, the Thumbay Group has deployed Trend Micro™ Deep Security™ to secure its data center (physical and virtual workloads) and Trend Micro™ TippingPoint™ to defend its network and improve the protection of vulnerable applications and systems. Then, with Trend Micro™ Deep Discovery™ Analyzer, the Thumbay Group could enable a Connected Threat Defense strategy by sharing threat intelligence between the Trend Micro and third-party security solutions to provide an automated response and faster detection of complex threats.

Trend Micro’s solutions were able to fulfill a key requirement, which was securing network traffic within each clinic, the network traffic between the clinics and headquarters, and internet traffic. At its university hospital, the Thumbay Group also uses network security to curb attack vectors coming from what students are doing from their unprotected endpoints.

Following the implementation of Trend Micro’s solutions, the Thumbay Group has been able to reduce the number of daily attacks significantly and identify compromised endpoints quickly across the entire network. Because the console can be accessed from anywhere, a lot of the monitoring is now handled by a remote monitoring team, which frees up local staff to perform other IT tasks.

Additionally, the security teams have found themselves spending less time personally checking endpoint incident sources—everything is now handled from a centralized point—and they receive reports for compliance requirements in a timely fashion.

Trend Micro’s flexibility allowed the installation of both software as a service (SaaS) and on-premises solutions where needed, saving critical bandwidth for day-to-day healthcare operations. With the rise in teleconsultations amid COVID-19, Trend Micro solutions are also helping the Thumbay Group to secure connections within the hospital, as well as the connections to patients at home.

 
 

RESULTS

Hospitals cannot function if their systems are not running. With Trend Micro, the Thumbay Group greatly improved its security posture, detecting roughly 7,600 malicious communications as part of its initial system analysis across the healthcare group, which that was promptly neutralized within mere minutes. Further, over a threeweek period, TippingPoint stopped around 600k attempted attacks on the Thumbay Group’s environment, including more than 10k attacks that were critical and dangerous.

Over a one-month period, Deep Security was able to detect and protect 2,498 vulnerabilities from being exploited on nine critical servers, using virtual patching.

 
 

WHAT'S NEXT

As the next stage of its digital transformation, the Thumbay Group is considering centralizing its data in a data center and leading an organization-wide change of culture in prioritizing security. The Thumbay Group is also in discussion about using Trend Micro™ XDR for its remote security operations center (SOC), helping to reduce the time for detection, response, and investigation.

 
 

Partners

Checkout our CIONET COOKBOOK

cookbook

Embark on a culinary journey through the ever-evolving world of digital leadership with our third edition of the CIONET Cookbook: Recipes for Digital Success. Unveiling the intricate trilemma faced by today’s Master Chefs, our trailblazing European CIOs address a challenge at the nexus of customer interests, digital transformation strategies, and IT modernisation. Their secret? Synchronising the gearing between customer, business, and technology to create a frictionless movement through the digital landscape.

The CIONET Cookbook uses the analogy of a five-star restaurant to explain the importance of optimally integrated technology, with the CIO as Master Chef. In order to provide the best service to its customers, a top restaurant must have the right atmosphere, an inviting menu, a well-equipped kitchen, talented and committed front-of-house and kitchen staff and smooth-running processes that ensure an enjoyable experience for diners.

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CIOFEST 2025 - From Order Taker to Proactive Disruptor

CIONET Reports

 
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Cybersecurity in critical infrastructure

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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HDS - From Hype to Reality Navigating the Challenges of GenAI

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Integration In An Era Of AI: Challenges And Opportunities

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About CIONET

CIONET’s mission is to help IT executives become more at ease and above all more successful in their jobs. So they can do more than just keep up with change but ultimately define it. CIONET opens up a whole new universe of opportunities in IT management.

With the largest membership of corporate digital leaders across Europe, Latin America, US and Australia, CIONET has the expertise and pioneering vision to solve or address any IT management challenge.

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From our local and global events, from our publications and research to our executive education programmes, everything we do is aimed at making sure digital leaders maximise their potential.

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