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Belgium 11-12-25 Country Members Physical english

Next Generation Digital Twins - CIONET Belgium: Community Event

Imagine being able to monitor, simulate, and optimise an entire city, factory, or supply chain in real time. Next-generation digital twins are making this vision a reality, transforming how we manage and understand complex systems. By creating dynamic virtual replicas of physical assets and processes, digital twins allow organisations to predict issues, optimize performance, and make data-driven decisions with unprecedented accuracy.This event will explore how digital twins are being used across industries to revolutionize the way we operate and maintain large-scale, intricate systems—whether it’s the infrastructure of a smart city, the efficiency of a factory floor, or the resilience of global supply chains.Examples of Digital Twins in Action:Smart Cities: Urban planners can use digital twins to simulate traffic flow, monitor energy usage, or predict the impact of weather events on infrastructure. This enables cities to optimize resources and improve the quality of life for their citizens.Factories of the Future: Manufacturing plants are leveraging digital twins to monitor equipment in real time, prevent downtime, and optimize production lines. With predictive analytics, factories can avoid costly breakdowns and improve overall efficiency.Supply Chain Management: Complex supply chains, spanning continents and industries, can be modeled as digital twins to track shipments, simulate disruptions, and optimize logistics. Businesses can reduce inefficiencies and respond faster to market demands.Key Themes:Real-Time Monitoring and Simulation: How digital twins provide real-time insights into complex systems, allowing for dynamic response and optimization.Predictive Power: Leveraging AI and data analytics, digital twins help organisations predict and mitigate issues before they happen, from equipment failures to supply chain bottlenecks.Scalability Across Ecosystems: Digital twins aren’t limited to individual assets—learn how they can be scaled across entire ecosystems like smart cities or global supply chains for maximum impact.Building Trust and Security: With digital twins handling critical infrastructure and sensitive data, what are the security and governance frameworks needed to ensure trust in these virtual systems?Why You Should Attend:Next-generation digital twins are no longer just a concept—they are revolutionizing industries by offering a new way to manage complexity. Whether you’re looking to optimize a city, factory, or supply chain, this event will provide practical insights into how digital twins can transform your organisation’s operations and drive future innovation.

Belgium 12-12-25 Squad Only Physical english

Managing IT Cost Without Losing Capability ; A practical look at how to control infrastructure, apps, and dev spend

Everyone wants value for money. But in IT, that value is spread across infrastructure, software, services, and people. Your infra spend is creeping up. App maintenance is eating your budget. New development is exciting but comes with hidden overhead. And people costs, from operations to engineering, remain the largest, most overlooked slice. If you’re under pressure to optimise without compromise, this session brings the right questions, trade-offs, and shared lessons to the table.

Belgium 16-12-25 Invitation Only Physical english

CIONET Round Table: Mastering Enterprise Service Management

This CIONET Round Table will focus on how the IT department can be the enabler that unlocks organisational efficiencies and helps to improve the employee experience. We will explore how CIOs and Digital Leaders can fundamentally transform the internal service experience by breaking down organizational silos, orchestrating complex cross-functional workflows, and leveraging a unified platform to deliver a truly frictionless experience for every employee.

December 12, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Physical english

Managing IT Cost Without Losing Capability ; A practical look at how to control infrastructure, apps, and dev spend

January 13, 2026 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual english

Moving Legacy Systems to the Cloud Efficiently : Balancing cost, risk, and continuity in complex migrations

Migrating legacy systems to the cloud remains one of the toughest balancing acts in IT. Every choice affects stability, cost, and trust at once, and what starts as a modernisation effort quickly turns into a negotiation between ambition and reality. Suddenly budgets rise, dependencies appear late, and timelines tighten as old architectures collide with new expectations. In the end, success depends on sequencing, ownership, and aligning business priorities with infrastructure limits, and not only on technical readiness. Making it work requires more than a plan on paper. Knowing which systems genuinely belong in the cloud, which can wait, and which should stay put shapes the entire roadmap and defines its success. Each refactoring decision sets the level of future flexibility, but it also drives cost and risk. The trade-offs between speed, sustainability, and resilience only become clear once migration begins and pressure builds. Let’s discuss how to plan migrations that stay on track, manage hidden dependencies, and handle downtime with confidence. Let’s also discuss how governance, testing, and vendor coordination keep progress visible and credible. Are you in? A closed conversation for those who turn cloud migration from a disruption into a long-term advantage.

January 22, 2026 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual english

AI-Driven Development: Redesigning workflows, responsibilities, and trust in the age of automation

AI coding assistants entered development teams quietly, but their impact grows by the day. What started as autocomplete now shapes architecture decisions, documentation, and testing. And when productivity gains are visible, so are new risks: security blind spots, uneven quality, and the slow erosion of shared standards. Teams move faster, but not always in the same direction. The challenge has become integration rather than adoption. And new questions have risen: how do you blend automation into established practices without losing oversight? When is human review still essential, and what should the rules of collaboration between developer and machine look like? As AI tools learn from proprietary code, where do responsibility and accountability sit? Let’s talk about how to redefine those workflows, balancing creativity with control, and protecting code quality in a hybrid human-AI environment. A closed conversation on where AI accelerates progress, where it introduces new debt, and how development culture must evolve to stay credible.

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University of Warwick bolsters cyber defences with Trend Micro Cloud App Security

Bolsters cyber defences with Trend Micro Cloud App Security

OVERVIEW

The UK education sector is an increasingly popular target for cybercriminals. Separate pieces of research have revealed that many universities have faced phishing and ransomware attacks. Given the highly sensitive research-based IP and personal data on students and staff stored by these institutions, it’s no surprise that they’ve become a favourite of hackers.

The University of Warwick has recognized the rise in attacks and proactively decided to further strengthen its defenses. Its Head of Cloud Services, Des Butcher, in conjunction with colleagues, sought out third-party expertise to help secure its Office 365 environment.

RISING THREAT LEVELS

The University’s existing anti-spam and malware capabilities were based on existing Unix relays; an unsustainable situation given the rapidly increasing volume, complexity and variety of threats. Des and his colleagues in ITS therefore set out to find a more effective solution to the problem; and one which addressed not only the primary threat vector of email but also provided protection across the entire Office 365 range. A priority was placed on third-party providers who could offer tight integration with Microsoft’s online productivity suite with an easy-to-implement product set.

ENTER CLOUD APP SECURITY

Des started a review of security solutions in January 2017, and asked a select group of vendors to present to the email team and IT security staff. Trend Micro™ Cloud App Security was chosen based on this presentation, and some outstanding commercials.

Trend Micro Cloud App Security is the perfect choice for businesses looking to extend the built-in security protections of Office 365 with advanced malware detection and data loss prevention. Here are just some of the benefits:

Document exploit detection helps find malware including ransomware in Office formats like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

Trend Micro™ Deep Discovery™ sandbox technology detects unknown malware and shares intelligence with other security layers.

Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network™-derived intelligence finds malicious URLs in both the message body and email attachments.

Detects attacks in progress as hackers try to migrate via email from compromised accounts within the organization.

Data Loss Prevention for OneDrive, SharePoint Online, Dropbox®, Box®, and Google Drive™ uses over 200 pre-built and customizable compliance templates to control sharing of controlled data.

Scans files shared from remote workers and partners.

Tight API-based integration means automatic, hassle-free set-up.

Trend Micro has been a Microsoft Gold Partner for 20 years.

"Trend Micro sits within your tenancy. That proximity to the data being protected had a significant advantage versus other gateway products. Typical gateway products focused on just email, rather than email, SharePoint and OneDrive, which are the other significant aspects of Office 365."

Des Butcher - Head of Cloud Services, University of Warwick

MAXIMUM SECURITY, MINIMUM OUTLAY

Des and his team first conducted some pen testing exercises on Cloud App Security before running the product in monitoring mode for a couple of weeks to check for false positives. The results were very good and the product was switched on.

It’s been plain sailing ever since: although the attacks keep on increasing, the impact on the university is significantly lower than that prior to Cloud App Security installation, says Des.

“We haven’t been affected by the majority of the attacks on higher education institutions that get reported” he adds.

The product has also helped Des save valuable resources, at a time when budgets are tight.

“By moving our defense into Office 365, we’re in a position to reduce the amount of resource we devote to this area and focus it elsewhere,” he concludes.

“From a commercial point-of-view, I’m confident its cost is neutral and has delivered significant benefits.”

"We can see a measurable benefit: a reduction in the volume of malware arriving in our users’ inboxes. We can look at the dashboard and get a view of potentially thousands of pieces of malicious content getting blocked."

Des Butcher - Head of Cloud Services, University of Warwick

Technologies

Trend Micro Cloud App Security™

CIONET Business Circles

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?

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.

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 !

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.