Keynote Title

Towards Integrated and Adaptive Cybersecurity Operations with Cross-Border Collaboration - A European Perspective

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Konstantinos Fysarakis

About the Talk / Abstract

As digital technologies become more pervasive in our everyday lives, cybersecurity risks are also becoming harder to assess and interpret due to the growing complexity of the threat landscape, adversarial ecosystem, and expansion of the attack surface. Notable in this landscape is the increase in sophisticated and targeted attacks in critical domains (e.g., energy, healthcare), and an increased prevalence of hybrid threats, such as threats combing both the cyber and the physical domains, ultimately threatening our economies, societies, & freedoms.

Within the European Union (EU), and thanks to the NIS Directive (2016/1148), EU Member States and their Operators of Essential Services (OES) are now forced to have a minimum baseline set of capabilities while providing cross-border coordination and cooperation. This push is expected to intensify as, in line with EU’s Cybersecurity Strategy, several initiatives are underway within the EU to address cybersecurity challenges in services critical to the economy and wider society, such as the European Cyber Defence Policy, the European Cyber Resilience Act, an upcoming update of the NIS Directive – NIS2 – which further elaborates upon the cybersecurity requirements imposed upon OES, also adding new domains into the OES category, and the establishment of a Joint Cyber Unit.

This talk aims to provide an overview of the above European landscape and highlight the need for joint cybersecurity operations tailored to the needs of EU Member State authorities entrusted with cybersecurity and their OES. It will also sketch an approach towards establishing a reference blueprint for establishing such cybersecurity operations, enabling shared situational awareness, joint preparedness, and coordinated incident response, in alignment with the relevant EU initiatives & facilitating interactions with EU cybersecurity structures and mechanisms.

Bio of the Speaker

Dr. Konstantinos Fysarakis holds a Ph.D. in Electronic & Computer Engineering, Embedded Systems Security (Technical University of Crete), an MSc in Information Security (Royal Holloway, University of London), and a BSc in Applied Mathematics (University of Crete). He is currently the CTO of Sphynx Analytics Ltd. In the past, he was the CTO of Sphynx Technology Solutions AG and has also worked as an R&D Engineer / Researcher for the Technical University of Crete (TUC), the Hellenic Aerospace Industry (HAI), the Telecommunication Systems Research Institute (TSI), the Foundation of Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), and the Hellenic Mediterranean University (HMU). At the latter, he also taught Information Security -focused undergraduate and postgraduate modules for several years. Throughout his career, he has been involved in over 20 research projects (FP7, Horizon & national). He has authored/co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications on the Security, Privacy, Dependability and Sustainability of embedded systems and ubiquitous smart platforms. He also enjoys working on industry-related tasks, dealing with Information Security Management (being an IRCA-certified ISO 27001:2005 auditor) and operational security topics such as Cyber Threat Intelligence and Security Automation, Orchestration & Response.

Additional Information

We aim to broadcast the keynote live, record it, and make it available online after the end of the workshop.

Keynote Live URL: TBA