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Welcome to CIONET Belgium

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Upcoming Events

 
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Belgium 28-8-25 Country Members Physical english

20 Years CIONET - CIONET Belgium: Summer Festival

A special celebration marking 20 years of CIONET—two decades of empowering digital leaders and driving innovation in the technology landscape. This exclusive event will bring together our members to reflect on the incredible journey we've shared and look ahead to the future of digital leadership.Featuring keynote presentations from visionary CIOs, industry pioneers, and founding members, we’ll explore how far we’ve come and what lies ahead in the ever-evolving world of technology. Together, we will honour the contributions of our members who have shaped CIONET’s legacy while offering insights into how the community will continue to lead in the years to come.This is more than a celebration—it’s an opportunity to reconnect, reflect, and recharge with your fellow digital leaders. Don't miss this exclusive experience packed with inspiring talks, networking opportunities, and special recognitions that highlight the best of CIONET’s history and future.Let’s celebrate the past, present, and future of the digital community you helped build.

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Belgium 28-8-25 Country Members Physical english

Summer Festival - Advisory Board

A special celebration marking 20 years of CIONET—two decades of empowering digital leaders and driving innovation in the technology landscape. This exclusive event will bring together our members to reflect on the incredible journey we've shared and look ahead to the future of digital leadership. Featuring keynote presentations from visionary CIOs, industry pioneers, and founding members, we’ll explore how far we’ve come and what lies ahead in the ever-evolving world of technology. Together, we will honour the contributions of our members who have shaped CIONET’s legacy while offering insights into how the community will continue to lead in the years to come.

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Belgium 2-9-25 All TRIBERS Virtual english

What Does It Cost to Host an App? ; A practical guide to calculating hosting costs across infra, licenses, and operations

You’ve been asked a simple question: “What does it cost to host this application?” But the answer is anything but simple. The platform sits across multiple data centres. The app spans a few VMs, shares a backup system, uses licensed monitoring, and touches five different teams. Your CMDB should help, but it’s rigid, outdated, or incomplete. And yet, you still need to provide a number, clear, explainable, and grounded in reality.

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Upcoming TRIBE Events

 
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August 5, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

AI Act – praktyka stosowania na rynku polskim

AI Act – dyrektywa unijna regulująca wiele zasad wykorzystania AI w modelach biznesowych- już obowiązuje na polskim rynki. Ciekawe są prawdziwe i realne przypadki jej stosowania. Spójrzmy na temat od strony regulacyjnej, czyli prawnej. Ale zobaczmy praktykę aktywnej w temacie kancelarii prawnej. Zaprosiliśmy mecenaskę Aleksandrę Maciejewicz z kancelarii Lawmore, która od dłuższego czasu jest niezwykle aktywna i praktykuje w tym temacie. Poznamy podstawę prawną, praktyczne case’y i opis sytuacji oczami prawdziwego praktyka.

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August 6, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

DORA: wszystko, co chcielibyście wiedzieć, a baliście się zapytać

Michał Kulesza, adwokat, partner w departamencie technologicznym kancelarii Rymarz Zdort Maruta i szef zespołu regulacji ICT, przeprowadzi nas przez kluczowe wątki rozporządzenia i zmierzy się z pytaniami zgłoszonymi przez uczestników. Omówimy zarówno krytyczne aspekty na początku wdrożeń, jak i dostrajanie zmian na poziomie organizacyjnym i strategicznym. Masz konkretny temat, który warto poruszyć? Zgłoś go w trakcie rejestracji. Zamiast czytać między wierszami DORA – porozmawiajmy o tym wprost.

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August 7, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

Automated Systems Testing

Duże tempo developmentu i dokonywanych zmian wymaga nowej klasy testowania. Jakość systemów obserwowana na produkcji będzie pochodną skuteczności tego procesu. Duże nadzieje wiążemy z platformami wspierającymi testowanie i opartymi na AI. Sesja ta pokaże, gdzie jesteśmy w poszukiwaniu takich rozwiązań i gdzie ewaluuje myślenie szefów testów i ich rozwiązania organizacyjne.

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CIONET Partner Updates

CIONET Partner Updates

Recent Cases

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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.”

 

Business benefits:
  • Essential capabilities restored days after attack
  • No need to pay ransom to hackers
  • Threat stopped before costly loss of data
  • New confidence in 24/7 security managed services
 

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
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Bahadir Samli
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Managing Director
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Director General Digital Transformation
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Chief Commercial Officer (CCO)
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Directeur général
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Head Of IT (CIO)
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Team

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Luc Hendrikx
CEO
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Daniel Eycken
Partner - COO
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Founder - MD
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Jelte Scheys
Tribes Sales Director Belgium
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Herman Roelandts
Tribe Master
Joseph Antoun
Joseph Antoun
Senior Program Director
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Eman De Sutter
Program Manager
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Shelly Deracourt
Program Manager
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Charlotte Coen
Partner Success Manager
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Ivana Bradvica
Junior Event Manager
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Financial Controller
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Vlera Berisha
Junior Community Manager
Phaedra Vanhaeren
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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!