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Welcome to CIONET Belgium

Realise your ambition! Connect with your local community of digital leaders.

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Upcoming Events

 
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Belgium 23-9-25 Squad Only Virtual english

Cybersecurity Without the Burnout ; Refocusing effort when alerts, threats, and pressure won’t stop

Security teams are overwhelmed. Too many tools. Too many alerts. Too few people. And now, increasing pressure from the board to protect everything, everywhere, all the time. Expect honest reflection, shared strategies, and a conversation that cuts through compliance noise and focuses on what to do when your team is stretched and your risk is rising.

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Belgium 23-9-25 Invitation Only Physical english

Reclaim the cloud : Powering Belgian Finance with Sovereignty

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, the financial services industry in Belgium faces a critical juncture regarding its cloud adoption strategy. While the allure of cloud computing – with its promise of scalability, agility, and innovation – is undeniable, the unique regulatory demands and paramount need for data sovereignty present significant challenges. This CIONET roundtable, aims to bring together Digital Leaders from the Belgian financial sector to discuss how to navigate these complexities. We will explore how financial institutions can leverage cloud technologies while ensuring complete control over their data, maintaining compliance with stringent European regulations like GDPR and DORA, and mitigating geopolitical risks.

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Belgium 24-9-25 Invitation Only Physical english

Bridging the Unbridgeable: IT Meets M(i)OT ; Converged infrastructures demand converged security

As smart devices proliferate across operational environments — from sensors on factory lines and GPS trackers in logistics fleets to wearables in healthcare and connected systems in smart cities — the integration of Managed IoT (MiOT) is accelerating. But with it comes a surge in cybersecurity risks. No longer isolated or air-gapped, OT systems are becoming fully networked, remotely accessible, and deeply entwined with IT. This creates a vulnerable, highly complex digital mesh, one where a single compromised device can trigger physical, financial, and reputational consequences.

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Upcoming TRIBE Events

 
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September 23, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english

Cybersecurity Without the Burnout ; Refocusing effort when alerts, threats, and pressure won’t stop

Security teams are overwhelmed. Too many tools. Too many alerts. Too few people. And now, increasing pressure from the board to protect everything, everywhere, all the time. Expect honest reflection, shared strategies, and a conversation that cuts through compliance noise and focuses on what to do when your team is stretched and your risk is rising.

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September 30, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english

Technical Debt: When to Pay It and When to Walk Away ; Making smart trade-offs between progress, maintenance, and risk

Everyone has technical debt. The question is what to do with it. Refactor now? Wait for the next feature? Build on it and hope it holds? If you’re tired of debating whether to clean up or move on, this session helps you frame the debt conversation in a way that supports both speed and stability.

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October 2, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english

The Career Path of the Architect ;Great architecture begins with great architects

Architecture doesn’t happen in diagrams. It happens in minds, seasoned, curious, sharp minds that understand how the pieces fit. But who’s shaping these minds? Who’s growing the next generation of digital architects? If you’re responsible for complex systems, and for the people designing them, this session is for you.

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CIONET Partner Updates

CIONET Partner Updates

Recent Cases

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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®, Isracard has cut provisioning times from weeks to minutes and improved resource use.

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.

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
Sibelga
Bahadir Samli
Bahadir Samli
CIO
ING Belgique
2-Feb-29-2024-11-35-00-9309-AM
Bart Kerkhofs
Vice President & Head of IT
Bridgestone EMIA
Untitled design (1)-Apr-01-2022-10-58-34-57-AM
Michał Paprocki
Group CIO
Euroclear
1-Feb-29-2024-11-34-59-8990-AM
Manfred Boudreaux-Dehmer
Chief Information Officer
NATO
Untitled design-Nov-22-2023-08-42-05-3178-AM
Annick Faes
Vice President IT and CIO Medical Devices EMEA
Johnson & Johnson
Piet_De_Ceuleners
Piet De Ceuleners
Global IT Director
Melexis
1658251930890
Dirk De Bevere
Large Enterprise Sales Leader
Telenet Business
Untitled design-7
Stef Schampaert
Country Managing Director BeLux
Red Hat
CIONET Belgium - Advisory Board Member - Geert Lejon
Geert Lejon
Vice President Head of Belux / Head of Comms Benelux
Cognizant
Kevin_Ledegen
Kevin Ledegen
Group IT director
SDWorx
Gunter-Van-Craen_Small
Gunter Van Craen
Chief Digital & Information Officer
Bekaert
Thomas Kessler
Thomas Kessler
Partner | CIO Programme Leader
Deloitte
Emmanuel Gob
Emmanuel Gob
CIO
DPD
pascal pauwels
Pascal Pauwels
CIO
Colruyt
Untitled design (4)-Dec-13-2023-10-53-15-5032-AM
Koen Segers
Managing Director Belgium and Luxembourg
Dell Technologies
benoit dewaele
Benoît Dewaele
Group IT Directo
Vandemoortele
Dirk Deridder-1
Dirk Deridder
CTO - Technology Services & Practices
SMALS
Thierry Driesens
Thierry Driesens
CIO
TVH
Untitled design-Sep-18-2023-11-59-29-7866-AM
Koen Vandaele
CIO
Delen Private Bank
Untitled design (4)-Jun-12-2023-01-23-11-7540-PM
Liesbet D'hoker
Managing Director
Kyndryl BeLux
steven-vermeulen
Steven Vermeulen
CIO
Digitaal Vlaanderen
Jack Hamande
Jack Hamande
Director General Digital Transformation
Federale Overheidsdienst Beleid en Ondersteuning
Tom Tomczak
Tom Tomczak
Chief Commercial Officer (CCO)
NRB
1726588748718
Cassandre Laurent
Directeur général
Agence du Numérique
an swalens
An Swalens
Head Of IT (CIO)
National Bank of Belgium
Untitled design (2)-Apr-01-2022-10-58-34-68-AM
Elke Laeremans
Chief Digital & Supply Chain Officer at Casa International
CIONET Belgium - Advisory Board Member - Koen Van Loo
Koen Van Loo
CIO
Group S.
Peter Sany
Peter Sany
Executive Advisor
Zoom
CIONET Belgium - Advisory Board Member - Steven De Haes
Steven De Haes
Dean
Antwerp Management School
Marleen Thorré
Marleen Thorré
Head of Digital EMEA
Mitsubishi Chemical Group
christel-plessers
Christel Plessers
Head of IT European Markets
Mercedes-Benz Europe
bauduin cor
Baudouin Corlùy
Chief Market Development Officer
LCL Data Centers

Team

Luc Hendrikx
Luc Hendrikx
Partner - CEO
Inès De Bien
Inès De Bien
Partner - CCO
1-Feb-08-2022-10-22-08-68-AM
Daniel Eycken
Partner - COO
Hendrik Deckers
Hendrik Deckers
Partner - Founder
Untitled design (1)-2
Jelte Scheys
Tribes Sales Director Belgium
foto Herman
Herman Roelandts
Tribe Master
Joseph Antoun
Joseph Antoun
Senior Programme Director
1-Dec-16-2021-02-15-57-02-PM
Eman De Sutter
Programme Manager
4-Feb-08-2022-10-22-09-03-AM
Shelly Deracourt
Programme Manager
Untitled design (5)-Sep-01-2022-02-47-55-60-PM
Charlotte Coen
Partner Success Manager
Untitled design (1)-Nov-22-2023-08-56-42-6802-AM
Ivana Bradvica
Programme Manager
ML B-W-1
Martine Lefevre
Financial Controller
Vlera Berishaa (1)
Vlera Berisha
Community Manager
Phaedra Vanhaeren
Phaedra Vanhaeren
Programme Manager

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!