Defending against digital threats: a preview of Cyber Meet-Up 2025

Safeguarding against cybersecurity threats is more crucial than ever. With our upcoming Cyber Meet-Up 2025 in Brussels, we want to raise cybersecurity awareness, share invaluable insights on the latest trends, and strengthen cyber resilience against those threats.

Our fourth annual Cyber Meet-Up conference in Brussels promises a day packed with talks about the latest cybersecurity trends, from compliance challenges to AI and the role of automation in the Security Operations Center. We spoke with Geoffrey Lucas, Cybersecurity Lead of Thales in Belgium, to provide an overview of the topics to be addressed at this conference.

Compliance : tools and opportunities

Regulations are becoming more and more important, and achieving compliance has become the high priority for many organizations. While this presents challenges, it also creates new opportunities, such as improving your competitive edge. In one of the talks at the conference, railway infrastructure management company Infrabel illustrates how it viewed NIS2 compliance as an opportunity to strengthen its cybersecurity posture.

A key tool that can help in achieving compliance is NDR (Network Detection and Response), Geoffrey says. “It truly enhances visibility on what’s happening on your network, which is required by NIS2. We consider NDR as an essential tool in any compliance journey, as it provides the ability to detect attacks at the earliest stage.” One of the talks elaborates on why NDR is an essential part of the Thales MDR (Managed Detection and Response) services.

Another talk concerns observability. At first glance, this appears unrelated to security, as observability primarily concerns the performance of the IT environment. However, an increase in server load might signal the onset of a security breach or other irregular activities, Geoffrey explains: “Integrating your observability solution into your security monitoring infrastructure allows you to detect these suspicious events before they impact your business.”

AI everywhere

As in many other domains, AI is increasingly taking an important role in the cybersecurity landscape, Geoffrey says. “A lot of companies are adopting AI without fully understanding how to use it. Often, this is under the pressure of employees, who are using ChatGPT on their smartphone and want to have similar functionality within their professional roles.” If companies don’t answer this need, this may lead to shadow AI, where employees are using it anyway on their own. But even companies that do integrate AI tools often lack the knowledge to implement this securely and effectively.

One of the talks at Cyber Meet-Up 2025 will focus specifically on the governance around AI implementations, Geoffrey explains. “It’s easy to activate an AI system such as Copilot, but that doesn’t mean it’s secure. Together with partners like IBM, we’ve developed a framework to address security for AI systems, including securing your data and monitoring AI usage. Companies need to formalize these processes, and this talk will detail how they can achieve this.”

All AI applications start with data, whether it’s for training an AI model or asking questions about company data. Therefore, securing AI applications starts with securing the flow of data, which is the topic of another talk. “In recent years, organizations have made significant strides in developing a cybersecurity strategy,” Geoffrey notes. “Driven by the need to comply to regulations like NIS2, DORA, and GDPR, they have protected their networks, endpoints, and servers. However, protecting the data itself often seems to be missing.”

A third talk in this domain discusses AI as both a tool for defense and as an instrument for cybercriminals. “If the good guys are using AI, the bad guys will as well,” Geoffrey explains. “Cybercriminals are increasingly using AI in their attacks, making new threats appear more frequently.”

Automating to stay focused

With all these new threats, it’s becoming more and more important to monitor your IT infrastructure 24/7 and to be able to detect threats and respond to them as fast as possible. That’s why we leverage automation to the fullest extent in our Modern SOC (Security Operations Center), allowing our SOC analysts to focus on their core tasks. In one of our talks, we will explain how we are reinventing security with automation, in collaboration with our partner Google.

You can learn more about these and other topics at our Cyber Meet-Up 2025 conference on September 18. All topics are covered in a practical way by experts with their boots on the ground. So, after this one-day event, you’ll gain actionable insights that immediately benefit your organization’s readiness for cyberattacks.