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Welcome to CIONET Belgium

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Upcoming Events

 
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Belgium 23-9-25 Squad Only Virtual english

Cybersecurity Without the Burnout ; Refocusing effort when alerts, threats, and pressure won’t stop

Security teams are overwhelmed. Too many tools. Too many alerts. Too few people. And now, increasing pressure from the board to protect everything, everywhere, all the time. Expect honest reflection, shared strategies, and a conversation that cuts through compliance noise and focuses on what to do when your team is stretched and your risk is rising.

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Belgium 23-9-25 Invitation Only Physical english

Reclaim the cloud : Powering Belgian Finance with Sovereignty

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, the financial services industry in Belgium faces a critical juncture regarding its cloud adoption strategy. While the allure of cloud computing – with its promise of scalability, agility, and innovation – is undeniable, the unique regulatory demands and paramount need for data sovereignty present significant challenges. This CIONET roundtable, aims to bring together Digital Leaders from the Belgian financial sector to discuss how to navigate these complexities. We will explore how financial institutions can leverage cloud technologies while ensuring complete control over their data, maintaining compliance with stringent European regulations like GDPR and DORA, and mitigating geopolitical risks.

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Belgium 24-9-25 Invitation Only Physical english

Bridging the Unbridgeable: IT Meets M(i)OT ; Converged infrastructures demand converged security

As smart devices proliferate across operational environments — from sensors on factory lines and GPS trackers in logistics fleets to wearables in healthcare and connected systems in smart cities — the integration of Managed IoT (MiOT) is accelerating. But with it comes a surge in cybersecurity risks. No longer isolated or air-gapped, OT systems are becoming fully networked, remotely accessible, and deeply entwined with IT. This creates a vulnerable, highly complex digital mesh, one where a single compromised device can trigger physical, financial, and reputational consequences.

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Upcoming TRIBE Events

 
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September 23, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english

Cybersecurity Without the Burnout ; Refocusing effort when alerts, threats, and pressure won’t stop

Security teams are overwhelmed. Too many tools. Too many alerts. Too few people. And now, increasing pressure from the board to protect everything, everywhere, all the time. Expect honest reflection, shared strategies, and a conversation that cuts through compliance noise and focuses on what to do when your team is stretched and your risk is rising.

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September 30, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english

Technical Debt: When to Pay It and When to Walk Away ; Making smart trade-offs between progress, maintenance, and risk

Everyone has technical debt. The question is what to do with it. Refactor now? Wait for the next feature? Build on it and hope it holds? If you’re tired of debating whether to clean up or move on, this session helps you frame the debt conversation in a way that supports both speed and stability.

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October 2, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english

The Career Path of the Architect ;Great architecture begins with great architects

Architecture doesn’t happen in diagrams. It happens in minds, seasoned, curious, sharp minds that understand how the pieces fit. But who’s shaping these minds? Who’s growing the next generation of digital architects? If you’re responsible for complex systems, and for the people designing them, this session is for you.

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CIONET Partner Updates

CIONET Partner Updates

Recent Cases

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HPE transforms to cloud-native endpoint management with a rapid Intune migration

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), a global IT services and equipment manufacturer, has implemented an enterprise-wide solution using Microsoft Intune for Mobile Application Management without enrollment and Windows mobile device management. This cloud-based solution has streamlined IT operations, improved cybersecurity, and enhanced user satisfaction.

Cloud-native endpoint management with Intune was definitely the right choice for us. All the savings we see from comprehensively securing and patching our endpoints, along with all the options and agility we get, and freeing up our IT time for other activities—it all more than pays for itself. 

Kregg Nelson: End User Compute Manager

HPE

 
 The HPE workforce uses more than 70,000 mobile devices and 115,000 Windows laptop PCs. For many years, HPE managed the Windows devices using a Microsoft Configuration Manager solution housed in a third-party datacenter. This on-premises solution served the company well for years but required ongoing hardware lifecycle management, relied on manual IT interventions, and suffered increased exposure to security breaches due to the lack of cloud-managed bug fixes and updates. Seeking to reduce complexity and modernize its operations, HPE saw a chance to vacate the third-party location and move device management to the cloud.

“We have at least 15 internal device SKUs that constantly need patches, updates, and new drivers, so the burden of doing this all with an on-premises system posed many challenges,” says Kregg Nelson, End User Compute Manager at HPE. “We realized that a cloud-based solution would not only make us more efficient but also open up new ways of integrating with other HPE workstreams, like security operations and human resources.”

In the case of HR, for example, the onboarding process for new devices was past due for modernization. Whenever a new employee or contractor joined the company, setting up their devices typically entailed multiple phone calls between IT, the user, and often the user’s manager. With the right collaboration between IT and HR, Nelson’s team knew cloud-based device management could help increase the speed and efficiency of making workers productive.

Driving parallel cloud journeys: Endpoint and identity access management

HPE knew it needed a cloud-based digital transformation to keep pace with business needs and security risks. The company chose Microsoft based on the capabilities of Microsoft Intune and accompanying technologies to simplify endpoint management and empower better user experiences. It also factored in the strength of the two companies’ past working relationship. “We got buy-in by showing our executives how deploying Intune would help reduce costs and make our employees more productive, and by presenting a Microsoft Defender for Endpoint P1 licensing plan that projected a positive ROI,” says Nelson. “Ultimately, our relationship with Microsoft sold the deal—we knew we’d benefit from their input and experience if we chose Intune to manage our thousands and thousands of endpoints.”

Side by side with the device management effort was the identity and access management journey Nelson’s team had been pursuing since 2018. HPE invested in Windows Autopilot and other Microsoft technologies at that time, including buying licenses for Intune in anticipation of implementing access management features. More recently, as part of its modernization, HPE simplified user authentication by using Windows Hello, streamlined deployment with help from Windows Autopilot, and used Windows Update to help ensure up-to-date devices during its ongoing Windows 11 migration.

“We learned that you can’t have modern fleet management without modern endpoint management, so we made it our focus to do both of these in the cloud,” says Nelson. “Migrating and consolidating our identity and access and device management systems put us onto a three-stage journey, going from on-premises to hybrid to fully cloud native.”

From there, Nelson’s team met with stakeholders across business groups and across the company to evaluate use cases and determine the best path forward for implementing the Intune solution. In April 2023, they rolled out full-scale device management capabilities to all Windows devices at HPE. Then, over the next five months, they did the same for implementing Intune with employees’ personal, unenrolled mobile devices using Mobile Application Management, enabling a centralized, highly secure way for supporting bring-your-own-device culture. By September 2023, only some mobile edge cases remained, which Nelson expects to fully resolve and complete the migration by early 2024.

You really want to help new employees feel productive right away, and getting them through first-time setup in 35 minutes or less is a great way to achieve that—it used to take two hours or more. Windows Autopilot has been critical for achieving this. We’ve had 4,500-plus people try it the new way since April, and customer satisfaction scores are at 98 percent—an all-time high. 

Kregg Nelson: End User Compute Manager

HPE

Streamlining workflows for IT, cybersecurity, HR, and users

The Intune rollout has led to improved collaboration between IT and HPE cybersecurity teams. The rollout has also enabled other security improvements, such as remote wipe—detecting a lost or stolen device as soon as it touches the internet and shutting down user access to sensitive apps and data.

Security postures and policies with the new system are also producing positive results. “We have new levels of granularity that let us operate more effectively and also sectionalize the business in helpful ways,” says Nelson. “A huge example is that by proving we can create profiles that have extremely granular policies and privileges, we’re now able to comply with government requirements that help us win contracts we couldn’t have qualified for before.”

Other benefits of moving to the cloud include running leaner, smarter IT operations and improving new employees’ experience with their HPE equipment. Nelson reports that he has been able to refocus the time and talents of his operations team on more innovative and revenue-driven activities. System patches that formerly took five to seven days to get installed on a user’s device now take only 24 to 48 hours at most, and many update processes are now automated. And by working with HR, Nelson’s team also reinvented the way first-day employees start using their devices to do work, helping them start contributing in their roles more quickly than in the past.

“You really want to help new employees feel productive right away, and getting them through first-time setup in 35 minutes or less is a great way to achieve that—it used to take two hours or more,” says Nelson. “Windows Autopilot has been critical for achieving this. We’ve had 4,500-plus people try it the new way since April, and customer satisfaction scores are at 98 percent—an all-time high.”

Simplifying and modernizing with cloud-native endpoint management

By dismantling its on-premises endpoint management infrastructure, HPE transformed its operations for a new era of efficient and agile cloud-based management for all devices. The key change, Nelson notes, has been simplicity. “Where it used to be time-consuming and costly to manage all the complexities of our on-premises environment, we can now perceive everything through a cloud-connected ecosystem with Intune and proactively manage the day-to-day,” he explains. “And with Microsoft, we achieved speed, not only by rolling it out steadily, but also by becoming more agile and responsive to users because we’re in the cloud.”

This success demonstrates that big companies can move device management to the cloud at a fast pace—even ones with hundreds of thousands of devices in use, and whose systems were fully on-premises less than two years ago. Nelson says his company’s return on investment has already proven beneficial. “Cloud-native endpoint management with Intune was the right choice for us,” he says. “All the savings we see from comprehensively securing and patching our endpoints, along with all the options and agility we get, and freeing up our IT time for other activities—it all more than pays for itself.”

Future plans include adopting Microsoft Intune Suite solutions, such as enabling endpoint privilege management in ways that further help secure new customer contracts by enabling device management without requiring administrative access. The company is also interested in trying Remote Help as a way of providing very secure, enterprise-level user support. Meanwhile, Nelson offers the following advice to other companies thinking about their own digital transformations:

  • Do all of your homework ahead of time so when you’re ready to implement your cloud-based endpoint management solution, you can move quickly and get it done. “We did a lot of pre-work over the first few months, meeting with stakeholder groups and identifying potential security hiccups,” says Nelson. “Then with help from Microsoft, we specified all of our use cases in one day, setting us on a clear path to a very smooth deployment.”
  • Always be moving forward, not backward. The need for modernization and future growth at HPE overcame the temptation to rebuild its on-premises solution, and Nelson says Intune was the obvious choice for his team. “Honestly, when I think about Intune, I really don’t feel like I have limitations,” he says. “The feeling is more like: What can Intune do for us today? How can we use Intune to configure and meet the demands of whatever challenges we’re currently facing?”

Partners

CIONET Circles

CIONET Business Circles

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Healthcare Circle

Digital Transformation is redefining the future of health care and health delivery. All stakeholders are convinced that these innovations will create value for patients, healthcare practitioners, hospitals, and governments along the patient pathway. The benefits are starting from prevention and awareness to diagnosis, treatment, short- and long-term follow-up, and ultimately survival. But how do you make sure that your working towards an architecturally sound, secure and interoperable health IT ecosystem for your hospital and avoid implementing a hodgepodge of spot solutions? How does your IT department work together with the other stakeholders, such as the doctors and other healthcare practitioners, Life Sciences companies, Tech companies, regulators and your internal governance and administrative bodies?

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Telenet Business Leadership Circle

The Telenet Business Leadership Circle powered by CIONET, offers a platform where IT executives and thought leaders can meet to inspire each other and share best practices. We want to be a facilitator who helps you optimise the performance of your IT function and your business by embracing the endless opportunities that digital change brings.

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Les Rencontres

Découvrez la dynamique du leadership numérique aux Rencontres de CIONET, le programme francophone exclusif de CIONET pour les leaders numériques en Belgique, rendu possible grâce au soutien et à l'engagement de nos partenaires de programme : Deloitte, Denodo et Red Hat. Rejoignez trois événements inspirants par an à Liège, Namur et en Brabant Wallon, où des CIOs et des experts numériques francophones de premier plan partagent leurs perspectives et expériences sur des thèmes d'affaires et de IT actuels. Laissez-vous inspirer et apprenez des meilleurs du secteur lors de sessions captivantes conçues spécialement pour soutenir et enrichir votre rôle en tant que CIO pair. Ne manquez pas cette opportunité de faire partie d'un réseau exceptionnel d'innovateurs numériques !

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Female Leadership Circle

CIONET is committed to highlighting and celebrating female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, creating a leadership programme that empowers and elevates women within the tech industry. This initiative is dedicated to showcasing the achievements and successes of leading women, fostering an environment where female role models are recognised, and their contributions can ignite progress and inspire the next generation of women in IT. Our mission is to shine the spotlight a little brighter on female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, and to empower each other through this inner network community.

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Check out our latest news

Testimonials

Geert Goethals
Geert Goethals
CIO
Sibelga
Bahadir Samli
Bahadir Samli
CIO
ING Belgique
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Bart Kerkhofs
Vice President & Head of IT
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Michał Paprocki
Group CIO
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Manfred Boudreaux-Dehmer
Chief Information Officer
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Vice President IT and CIO Medical Devices EMEA
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Stef Schampaert
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Bekaert
Thomas Kessler
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Emmanuel Gob
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DPD
pascal pauwels
Pascal Pauwels
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Koen Segers
Managing Director Belgium and Luxembourg
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Group IT Directo
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Thierry Driesens
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Koen Vandaele
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Liesbet D'hoker
Managing Director
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Director General Digital Transformation
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Tom Tomczak
Chief Commercial Officer (CCO)
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Cassandre Laurent
Directeur général
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Head Of IT (CIO)
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Chief Digital & Supply Chain Officer at Casa International
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Christel Plessers
Head of IT European Markets
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Baudouin Corlùy
Chief Market Development Officer
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Team

Luc Hendrikx
Luc Hendrikx
Partner - CEO
Inès De Bien
Inès De Bien
Partner - CCO
1-Feb-08-2022-10-22-08-68-AM
Daniel Eycken
Partner - COO
Hendrik Deckers
Hendrik Deckers
Partner - Founder
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Jelte Scheys
Tribes Sales Director Belgium
foto Herman
Herman Roelandts
Tribe Master
Joseph Antoun
Joseph Antoun
Senior Programme Director
1-Dec-16-2021-02-15-57-02-PM
Eman De Sutter
Programme Manager
4-Feb-08-2022-10-22-09-03-AM
Shelly Deracourt
Programme Manager
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Charlotte Coen
Partner Success Manager
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Ivana Bradvica
Programme Manager
ML B-W-1
Martine Lefevre
Financial Controller
Vlera Berishaa (1)
Vlera Berisha
Community Manager
Phaedra Vanhaeren
Phaedra Vanhaeren
Programme Manager

Contact us

Would you like to know more about CIONET Belgium, membership or partnership opportunities? Do you have feedback or any other question? Send us a message!