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Welcome to CIONET Belgium

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Upcoming Events

 
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Belgium 21-4-26 Invitation Only Physical english

From Victim to Victor: Cyber resilience is a means, providing Business Continuity the goal

In an era where every outage, audit, and cyberattack is a test of organisational survival, resilience has become the new currency of trust. While traditional perimeter security with: firewalls, intrusion detection, and scanners, remains essential, it is no longer a sufficient guarantee against modern threats that bypass these layers to penetrate your core systems. Today, enterprises require security and continuity that are built-in, not bolted-on. This CIONET roundtable focuses on the shift from reactive disaster recovery to proactive Business Continuity. Together with experts from HPE Zerto, we will explore how organisations can transform their recovery strategies into seamless continuity models.

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Belgium 23-4-26 Country Members Physical & Virtual english

CIOFEST BELGIUM: Leadership in the Agentic Era

AI is no longer confined to supporting human tasks. We are entering the agentic era, where autonomous systems act on behalf of people and organisations. These agents can gather information, make decisions, negotiate terms, and even complete transactions. The implications extend well beyond technology; they touch the very foundations of business models, governance, and leadership. For CIOs and their peers, the rise of “machine customers” and autonomous partners poses new questions: Market impact: How do you compete and create value when some customers and suppliers are machines? Governance: What trust, compliance, and accountability structures are needed when AI acts independently in financial, procurement, or customer-facing processes? Leadership: How should CIOs guide their organisations in redefining roles, responsibilities, and decision-making when agents take over parts of the value chain?Business strategy: What opportunities emerge for new revenue models, platforms, and ecosystems shaped by autonomous interaction? This session shifts the focus from the mechanics of AI agents to the decisions that will shape leadership in the next decade. It is a call for CIOs to prepare for a future where relationships, markets, and strategies are no longer limited to human-to-human interactions, but also extend to human-to-machine and machine-to-machine interactions.

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Belgium 29-4-26 Invitation Only Physical english

Building Future-Ready Application Ecosystems in the Age of Intelligent Automation

This CIONET workshop is a collaborative deep-dive into the practicalities of"rewiring the building" while it’s still occupied. Drawing onKyndryl’s deep heritage in mission-critical infrastructure and their latestresearch, we will dismantle the "hidden costs" of legacyenvironments. The conversation will focus on the transition from static,monolithic structures to composable architectures that allow intelligent agentsto operate seamlessly across hybrid landscapes.

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Upcoming TRIBE Events

 
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April 2, 2026 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual english

Taming the SaaS Sprawl: Tracking spend, ownership, and usage before it slips out of control

SaaS gave business units freedom: quick onboarding, no infrastructure, and instant results. But over time, that freedom turned into fragmentation. Each team now buys, renews, and configures its own stack. HR has one platform, finance has another, and marketing probably has ten. The invoices keep coming, usage keeps dropping, and no one is sure who’s accountable for what.

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May 12, 2026 Squad Session Invitation Only Physical english

Product-Centric IT 2.0: Blending product and project thinking

Everyone says they’ve gone product-centric. In reality, most organisations live in a hybrid world where projects, products, and platforms overlap. Teams manage releases while still chasing deadlines, and governance still thinks in milestones rather than outcomes. The shift is underway, but the mindset hasn’t caught up.

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May 19, 2026 Squad Session 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.

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CIONET Partner Updates

CIONET Partner Updates

Recent Cases

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Delivering visibility, control, and simplified security to Bathgate Group

Delivering visibility, control, and simplified security to Bathgate Group

OVERVIEW

The Bathgate Group has been delivering excellence to customers across a range of products and services for over 50 years. The Cheshire-headquartered firm is now comprised of four companies—producing high quality silica sand, delivering B2B finance, as well as road haulage services. It’s also one of the largest raised access floor manufacturers in Europe.

Managing IT for such a diverse organization comes with its own distinct set of challenges, as Group IT Manager, Chris Snape, knows well. He was brought in to consolidate and streamline the environment around 18 months ago and made cybersecurity a priority. Trend Micro Worry-Free Services Advanced, delivered from the Vodafone Business Marketplace, already had a huge impact—saving significant IT time and money while minimizing the company’s risk exposure.

 

"Trend Micro does what it says on the tin. It’s worry-free security which lets me get on with day-to-day tasks and other projects. [Trend Micro Worry-Free] massively reduced the number of man hours we spend on security management, and if anything needs doing hands on, it can be done from the dashboard."

Chris Snape - Group IT Manager, Bathgate Group

 
 

CHALLENGES

Bathgate’s 200 endpoints include 50 mobile devices used by the company’s delivery drivers. Combined with employees’ corporate email accounts and Microsoft 365 productivity applications, they represented a sizeable attack surface for IT to protect. The brief was to simplify endpoint and email security for Bathgate without sacrificing quality.

“When I came in, all our endpoints were individually configured and running different versions [of security software]. Plus, there was no centralized reporting, so if something happened there was no way of easily finding out,” says Chris. “What I wanted for the group was something that could be managed centrally and rely on to work by itself in the background. But also, a product that we could configure with exceptions and business rules.”

 
 

WHY TREND

Chris was introduced to Vodafone Business, who recommended Trend Micro Worry-Free Services Advanced delivered from their Business Marketplace portal. The product offers powerful protection for endpoints, cloud apps, and email from a single solution:

  • 100% SaaS delivery means no installation or maintenance headaches and aligns well with hybrid working practices
  • Endpoint security features web reputation, URL filtering, high fidelity machine learning, behavioural analysis, data loss prevention (DLP), device control, and more to block ransomware and advanced threats
  • Email security blocks targeted attacks, spam, phishing, viruses, spyware, business email compromise (BEC), credential phishing, and inappropriate content from impacting your business
  • Collaboration security protects Microsoft services, such as Teams, SharePoint, Exchange, and OneDrive, as well as other cloud apps from unknown threats and intentional and accidental data loss
 
 

SOLUTION

Accessing the solution from the Vodafone Marketplace portal multiplied the value for Chris by simplifying the supply chain and consolidating support with a single provider. “Trend Micro was introduced to us as an all-in-one solution well managed through the Vodafone Marketplace portal and at the right price point,” explains Chris.

 
 

RESULTS

The combined offering delivers powerful protection across email and endpoints, while streamlining security and offering enhanced control, according to Chris. A recent incident in which an external email was hijacked and tried to send malicious emails to employees, was detected and mitigated by Trend Micro.

“I could see via the dashboard what happened and called them to make sure they changed their password. After the first few [spam] emails came in the product learned and started to quarantine them. Inboxes get pretty much no spam at all now,” Chris explains.

 
 

WHAT'S NEXT

Bathgate have been so pleased with the way Trend Micro and Vodafone Business have performed over the past year; they’ve decided to sign up for another year without shortlisting any competitors.

Technologies

Worry Free Services

CIONET Circles

CIONET Business Circles

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Cyber Circle

CIONET’s Cyber Circle: a new three-event programme exclusively focusing on the most urgent, complex, and high-impact challenges in cybersecurity today. Launched in 2026, this initiative brings together CISOs, CIOs, and senior IT executives with a strong interest in cybersecurity for three curated gatherings each year. As part of CIONET’s trusted executive community, the Cyber Circle provides a confidential, peer-driven environment to exchange insights, share real-world experiences, and address evolving cyber threats. Each session is designed to foster strategic dialogue, strengthen resilience, and elevate cybersecurity as a core driver of business value.

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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
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Director General Digital Transformation
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Team

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Luc Hendrikx
Partner - CEO
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Partner - CCO
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Daniel Eycken
Partner - COO
Hendrik Deckers
Hendrik Deckers
Partner - Founder
foto Herman
Herman Roelandts
Tribe Master
Joseph Antoun
Joseph Antoun
Senior Programme Director
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Eman De Sutter
Programme Manager
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Shelly Deracourt
Programme Manager
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Charlotte Coen
Partner Success Manager
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Ivana Bradvica
Programme Manager
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Community Manager
Stanislav Mosan
Stanislav Mosan
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Contact us

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