5 Things to Look Forward to at EMEA CISO Executive Summits

The first half of 2022 brought Evanta’s European CISO communities together in-person through Executive Summits and Inner Circle Dinners — that’s around 350 CISOs, in total, face to face! Our UK & Ireland and Nordic communities boasted successful Summits packed full of the regions’ most influential security leaders who shared their stories, exchanged ideas, and made new connections.

July’s blog gave a detailed roundup of our first half gatherings, but we wanted to highlight a couple of our favourite testimonials from two of our Executive Summits. 

I’ve heard others reflecting not only on how nice it was to be back together in-person again, but also how much they appreciated being part of a community where we can all share ideas and thoughts, lean on each other for support and also engage with the sponsor companies without being hit with the hard-sell at every step.”

Matt Gordon-Smith
CISO, Gatwick Airport, UK&I CISO Co-Chair

What made the biggest difference with being a speaker at the Nordic CXO Executive Summit compared to other events was that the participating audience was made up of highly qualified individuals with great knowledge and deep interest, which meant that as a speaker you had to give a lot of yourself to capture and maintain their interest. Of course, this places extra responsibility on the speakers, but as a result, the quality of the event was very high… These opportunities give the audience but also us speakers a chance to network, but also to develop ourselves and absorb lessons from our colleagues.”

Jan Olsson
Police Superintendent, Swedish CyberCrime Center, Nordic CIO & CISO Keynote Speaker

Now while most of Europe has been enjoying record-breaking, hot weather this summer, our Governing Body Members have also been hard at work creating exciting gatherings for the second half of the year. With more data from the Leadership Perspective Survey flooding in to influence the direction of upcoming gatherings, here are the latest priorities according to CISO community members in our European regions: 

1. Measuring and communicating risk
2. Cloud security, strategy and architecture
3. Third-party risk management
4. Security awareness
5. User access and identity access management

For three of our communities, the second half of 2022 will bring Executive Summits. The Benelux and DACH CISO Communities will be coming together in-person at their summits for the first time since 2019, while the France CISO Community will be hosting their first ever Executive Summit. As we all know, it’s almost impossible to recreate the feel of an in-person connection virtually, so we are elated to be “back to live” in these regions to complement the cadence of virtual gatherings. 

Let’s take a look at the speakers and sessions Evanta CISOs in Europe are most looking forward to attending for the remainder of the year. 

• As mentioned above, cyber risk maintains its spot as the #1 priority for security leaders. This proves apparent again during a year of continual uncertainty and ongoing global crisis. At the Benelux CIO & CISO Executive Summit on 4th October, Allan Cockriel, CIO – Global Functions/IRM and CISO, will be sharing key metrics CIOs and CISOs should be using to quantify risk to the business, as well as which methodologies can help transform the relationship security has with the business.
• One of the most out of the box sessions coming up will be run by Sharon Isaaci, VP Cyber Security Services, EMEA, and team at Sygnia during the DACH CISO Executive Summit on 29th November. Titled “From the Front Lines – The Ransomware Defence Strategies that Worked,” this interactive session will mimic the war games format giving the audience the chance to learn from each other in real time as they react to a cyber incident.
• With an ever-evolving threat landscape, CISOs have told us they are under pressure to find balance in IT & OT security processes. Eric Singer from Schneider Electric will share his IT & OT journey at the France CIO & CISO Executive Summit in Paris on 30th November. He will discuss how to identify the strongest risk metrics that will help craft a compelling business case for the board and how to collaborate at an industry-wide level to strengthen OT projects.
• At the Benelux CIO & CISO Executive Summit, Ing Yan Ong, Co-Chair, and Jan Joost Bierhoff, CIO & CISO of Heineken, will be sharing their insights into what makes a great partnership between IT and Security, and how this has been key in enabling Heineken to become the Best Connected Brewer. This topic has been highly sought after by the CISO community after the success of a similar partnership story at the UK&I CISO Executive Summit in June led by Craig Charlton & Imran Ali, Group CIO & CISO/CTO, at Compass Group.
• Whilst the competition for talent has been a widespread challenge for enterprises across the globe, the DACH CISO Community highlighted this as a top priority to discuss at their upcoming summit. The workshop titled “Thinking Outside the Box — Discussing Disruptive Ideas to Talent Shortages” will be run by Angelo La Penna, CISO EMEA at Swiss Re, and will touch upon two preselected scenarios for security leaders to work through in small groups.

If you’d like to know more about the line up of speakers and content your Evanta community has to offer, please go to your community page to learn more or register for an upcoming gathering here.