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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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Isracard creates foundation for faster, innovative development

In response to rapid industry change, Israeli credit card company Isracard sought to speed and
simplify its service development approach. By building a new container-based IT infrastructure
with Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, Isracard has cut provisioning times from weeks to minutes
and improved resource use. Now, its developers can focus on exploring new, innovative solutions
to customer demands, and its infrastructure team can take advantage of the latest security and
management capabilities

Reinventing complex IT systems and processes
Israel’s financial market has experienced massive shifts in recent years, such as rapid fintech growth
and significant regulatory changes that required banks to divest their credit card businesses.
Formerly part of Israel’s largest bank, Isracard now serves close to half of the country’s credit card
market. It provides payment, loan, and other services to business and consumers, including through
partnerships with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.
As a smaller organization than its larger parent institution, Isracard sought to take advantage of
opportunities to embrace new technology as a market leader.
“While we lost some of our power to acquire and retain new customers as an independent organization,
we also gained the freedom to reinvent our business strategy and processes. For example, we have
the chance to be part of the industry-changing open banking revolution,” said Dvir Ben-Aaron, Chief
Technology Officer, Isracard. “To take advantage of this opportunity, we chose to evolve our legacy
technology environment to more efficient, container-based development and delivery.”

Creating new credit services with a supported, container-based foundation
After researching and testing potential solutions, Isracard selected Red Hat OpenShift as its new
IT foundation. This enterprise container platform supports innovative application development,
deployment, and management across hybrid cloud environments.
“We were looking for a technology platform that would serve our business for years to come. We
found that Red Hat OpenShift is more mature and provides stronger security capabilities than other
solutions in the market,” said Ben-Aaron. “Red Hat has a proven record of success with securitysensitive organizations and the availability of skilled local support. They were able to demonstrate
the value of their technology and services for our developer, infrastructure, and security teams.”
Isracard’s teams—many of whom were new to using Kubernetes—worked closely with Red Hat
Consulting during and after implementation to learn best practices and define, design, and create
workloads for the company’s new on-premise OpenShift environment. After a successful initial
implementation, Isracard recently upgraded to Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, a set of products
that add advanced management, security, and storage capabilities to Isracard’s existing OpenShift
foundation. For example, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes helps organizations
reduce operational risks and costs with built-in security across the entire application development
life cycle.
Isracard now uses on-premise Red Hat OpenShift to support a variety of projects, including
integration with Israel’s 20 major banks, accelerating time to market for new services, and
reconfiguring a critical back-end system.
“We want to keep our platform updated with comprehensive security and the latest container features,”
said Ben Aaron. “OpenShift Platform Plus gives us flexible, low-code features that will help us bring
even more speed and innovation to our infrastructure architecture and processes. For instance, new
hybrid cloud capabilities will help us distribute new services that we develop locally.”

Adopting more efficient back-end processes to focus on customer-facing innovation
- Reduced infrastructure setup time from weeks to minutes with automated provisioning processes
- Increased developer independence with self-service environment management, freeing time and
resources for innovative work

Improved resource use, reducing reliance on growing server footprint
- Established in-demand container technology foundation for partnerships with other banking and
fintech organizations

Continuing successful container adoption journey with new strategic projects

After its initial success with containers, Isracard can now focus on new, innovative projects for both
customers and its development teams. The company is adding several new Red Hat OpenShift
clusters to support several upcoming projects, including customer-facing credit approval and other
digital applications, unified management, and support for cloud-based workloads. Isracard plans
to continue working closely with Red Hat’s technology experts to take advantage of these new
opportunities and grow its reputation for innovative financial services. In the near future, the team
will expand its OpenShift environment with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubenetes,
as well as Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation.
“We see our relationship with Red Hat as strategic to our ongoing success in our transformation
journey,” said Ben Aaron. ”In addition to bringing open banking benefits to our customers, we’re
using Red Hat OpenShift to work toward our goal of becoming a credit services provider to other
businesses as well, from tools to processes and more. Our team is excited to see their ideas become
reality, keep learning, overcome our challenges, and continue to grow.”

About Isracard

Isracard is the leading and largest credit card group in Israel with over 45 years of experience. It
operates mainly in the areas of financing, issuance of debit cards and clearing payment services.
Isracard holds significantly higher market shares of the market vis-à-vis its competitors. The group
operates about 4.4 million active credit cards of the following brands: Isracard, MasterCard, Visa
and American Express (exclusively in Israel). The group provides clearing services to most of the
clearing businesses in Israel. Our company provides consumer and commercial credit to the extent
of approximately NIS 6.2 billion and also manages the largest and leading consumer clubs in Israel
with significant value propositions for customers and partners.

Technologies

Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus

Partners

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