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Belgium 19-5-26 Invitation Only Physical english

AI vs AI in Cybersecurity: When defenders and attackers both use AI

The game has changed, clearly. Attackers have AI, defenders have AI, and both sides are learning faster than anyone expected, or maybe the attackers are just a bit faster. What used to take hours now happens in seconds, and detection windows close before alerts even appear. It’s adaptation beyond automation, and no one gets to sit still. But every promise of AI-driven defence comes with a price. The tools are expensive to train, maintain, and monitor. Mistakes cost more too. False positives drain teams, model drift hides real threats, and poisoned data turns protection into confusion. So now it’s not only about defending networks, it’s about defending the defenders themselves, from fatigue, blind trust, and automation gone wrong. So how do you keep visibility when both sides use the same weapons? How do you detect intent when patterns look human but aren’t? How do you justify cost when failure still happens, just faster? Let’s explore what happens when algorithms face each other on both sides of the firewall, and what new defences emerge when speed alone is no longer enough. A closed conversation about a future where cybersecurity becomes an AI vs AI battle, and humans still have to win.

Belgium 21-5-26 All Members Physical english

Replace, Wrap, or Rebuild? : Core modernization in financial services and insurance, without a full rewrite.

For banks, insurers, and other financial services leaders, core modernization is rarely a simple technology decision. The harder question is what to replace, what to wrap, what to rebuild selectively, and what to leave alone. This round table brings together senior peers to discuss how they are making those choices under real constraints: resilience, control, regulatory scrutiny, delivery speed, vendor dependency, and the risk of getting sequencing wrong. The conversation will focus on practical judgment, where modernization creates value, where it adds risk, and how to move forward without triggering another multi-year transformation cycle. A small-group discussion for leaders looking for clear decisions, credible trade-offs, and peer perspective.

Belgium 22-5-26 Invitation Only Physical english

Managing Vendor Lock-In: Balancing dependence, cost, and control in strategic partnerships

Every vendor swears their platform is open, flexible, and built for freedom. Then comes the renewal date. The price goes up, migration looks painful, and “strategic partnership” starts to feel more like dependency. Most organisations don’t get trapped overnight, they walk into it one contract at a time. Broadcom, anyone? We know lock-in isn’t only technical, it’s commercial, architectural, and even cultural. Once tools shape how teams work, switching becomes not only costly but politically impossible. So how do you manage dependency without losing leverage? What do you do when moving away costs more than staying? How do you negotiate from a position of weakness? And what governance models help prevent lock-in before it happens? Let’s share how to keep options open, make vendors compete without breaking partnerships, and find leverage even when it seems there’s none left. A closed conversation for those who’ve learned that freedom in IT is rarely free.

May 19, 2026 Squad Session Invitation Only Physical english

AI vs AI in Cybersecurity: When defenders and attackers both use AI

May 22, 2026 Squad Session Invitation Only Physical english

Managing Vendor Lock-In: Balancing dependence, cost, and control in strategic partnerships

May 26, 2026 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual english

The Career Path of the Cloud Engineer: From system builder to strategic enabler of digital scale

The cloud engineer’s world keeps expanding. It started with provisioning and automation, but now it touches everything: resilience, security, cost, and even business continuity. What used to be a back-end function has become one of the most visible roles in digital operations. Yet with that visibility comes pressure: constant evolution, constant firefighting, and very little time to step back and ask, “Where is this career actually going?”

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HDI Accelerates Development and Delivers Mobility With OutSystems

HDI is one of the premier providers of life insurance and non-life policies in Italy. Looking for new ways to accelerate development, HDI assessed OutSystems, and within just 4 weeks after adopting the platform, the team was able to launch a brand new web app with rapid updates and streamlined interfaces.

"We needed a system that could help our agents process and sell policies more easily—even when they’re out in the field. With OutSystems, we were able to enhance and simplify the UX of our core systems to deliver this."Stefano Fini, CIO, HDI

The Need for Development Speed

Challenge - Like many organizations, HDI had used a set development process for some time. Working in a waterfall structure, the insurance provider built its systems in a combination of .NET and Java.

While this was useful for developing its core systems, HDI’s IT department found that traditional development methods were putting the brakes on development and iteration. More importantly, these tried and tested methods were making it almost impossible to deliver the truly mobile applications that frontline agents and customers were demanding.

To deliver mobile applications—and a more engaging, smoother user experience—to its customers, HDI needed a new approach to software development.

Faster Development in Low-Code

Solution - To find the best solution, the HDI IT team spoke with the insurer’s infrastructure partner Almaviva. Almaviva’s experts suggested that HDI try OutSystems, a low-code platform they had previous experience with.

The HDI development team began testing the OutSystems platform. They quickly became confident that it could help accelerate development times and make it easier to deliver mobile-enabled applications.

Another key benefit was that the OutSystems platform offered a lower barrier to entry than conventional coding languages. With this, the team at HDI was confident that it would be easier to engage and onboard younger programmers as the business grows.

At the same time, the HDI team decided to augment its low-code platform with a new approach to software altogether. By shifting from its existing waterfall workflows to an Agile development methodology, the team looked to respond to user feedback faster than ever before.

"We feel low-code provides a faster development time (and of course faster delivery). It also gives us the opportunity to engage younger programmers. It’s easier to onboard new people without needing to train them in specific skills like Java, .Net, and other high-level languages."Stefano Fini, CIO, HDI

Initially, three developers were allocated to work with OutSystems. They were joined by technical leads from Almaviva, as well as some of the OutSystems team from Portugal. This cross-organizational team began working on a new application to help agencies sell policies on mobile devices.

Called the EasyMob app, the OutSystems-developed application represents the first time HDI has delivered a web-based solution that can be easily accessed on a mobile device. The project broke new ground and empowered agents, and helped train HDI developers in how to get the most out of the OutSystems platform.

An Intuitive Sales App in Just 4 Weeks

Results - While initially hesitant about changing their workflows, the HDI development team quickly became excited about the possibilities enabled by OutSystems. In particular, they appreciated the ability to take control of their own code, from initial development right through to deployment.

Within 4 weeks, the development team had completed the first module of HDI’s new EasyMob app—and delivered a truly mobile-friendly, intuitive web-based platform to agents. With enthusiastic support from within HDI, Stefano Fini, CIO at HDI, is planning to grow the OutSystems development team.

Because OutSystems supports extensive integration through APIs, the HDI development team was able to focus entirely on refining the frontend user experience for EasyMob. The team then left the API to handle integration with HDI’s insurance premium calculation systems.

The launch was a success, with agents enjoying an easy-to-use tool for premium calculations and policy sales. And thanks to HDI’s new agile development approach, the team has been able to rapidly update the EasyMob app since then to incorporate user feedback—and continuously optimize the user experience. Using OutSystems has been a win-win for HDI. Users appreciate rapid updates and more streamlined interfaces. And HDI’s developers enjoy being able to work and deploy faster than ever before thanks to the automation built into the OutSystems platform.

"Our end users have been pleasantly surprised by how quickly we’re able to make improvements to EasyMob. What might have taken a few days in traditional platforms takes half the time for us to do in OutSystems."Stefano Fini, CIO, HDI

In the future, Stefano intends to train more programmers to use the OutSystems platform. This is something he anticipates will be much easier than having to train new coders in traditional development platforms.

And of course, the HDI team intends to continue updating the EasyMob application to better support its users over time.

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