Petra De Sutter

Belgium Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Administration, Public Enterprises, Telecommunication and the Postal Services

After a career as a fertility specialist, Petra De Sutter's indignation about harmful emissions into the environment leads her to become involved in politics. She first finds herself in the Belgian Senate and the Council of Europe, where she campaigns for a more social Europe, the protection of refugees and LGBTQI+ rights. In 2019, she sits in the European Parliament, where she becomes the first elected member of the Greens group to chair the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection. On October 1, 2020, she becomes Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Administration, Public Enterprises, Telecommunication and the Postal Services. Within the scope of her competences, she wishes to fully meet the challenges of digitization and sustainability. As Deputy Prime Minister, Petra De Sutter ensures that the environmental principles are respected in the general policy of the government. She also aims to build a social, inclusive and progressive society.

Xavier Bettel

Luxembourg Prime Minister, Minister of State
Minister for Communications and Media
Minister for Religious Affairs
Minister for Digitalisation
Minister for Administrative Reform

Christian Muller

Deputy Head of Mission and Consul General, Luxembourg Embassy in Brussels

Christian Muller has been the Deputy Head of Mission and Consul General of Luxembourg in Brussels since 2020. Prior to that, he served at the Luxembourg embassies in Tokyo and Paris and at the Foreign Ministry in Luxembourg. Mr Muller has been a member of the Luxembourg diplomatic service since 2006.

Michel Van Bellinghen

Chairman of the Council, Belgian Institute for Postal services and Telecommunications (BIPT)

Michel Van Bellinghen chairs the BIPT Council and is responsible for the following departments: Purchase and Logistics, Budget and Finance, Communications, Translation, International Relations and Registry. Michel Van Bellinghen, Master of Laws (UCL), started off at the university in 1990 as a researcher, then became an assistant under the supervision of Professor Françoise Tulkens, at the UCL Laws Centre for Criminal Law. He became an assistant advisor at the Ministry of Justice in 1992 under the supervision of Professor Marc Bossuyt and joined BIPT in 1997. From 1999 to 2003 he held the position of expert at the private office of Rik Daems, who was the Federal Telecommunications Minister at the time, and afterwards took up the function of Assistant Head of the Private Office. From 2003 until 2009 he was nominated Member of the BIPT Council for the first time. Following this mandate he remained closely affiliated to the Council and supervised the legal department of the regulator during a number of years. He has written scientific publications. In 2013 he held a position on the Council as a Member. In January 2017 he was assigned Chairman of the BIPT Council.

Bernardo Herman

Member of the Council, Belgian Institute for Postal services and Telecommunications (BIPT)

Bernardo Herman is responsible for the Surveillance, NetSec, Postal Market and IT departments.
After obtaining a master’s degree in law (UCL), Bernardo Herman has been holding various legal, regulatory and management positions for over 20 years in the electronic communications and audiovisual sectors in several private and public organisations. After 5 years with mobile operator KPN-Orange/Base Company, where he intervened in various cases concerning government affairs and competition law, he joined the BIPT for the first time in 2004 as a legal advisor for the Telecom Market & Media Department. From 2006 to 2009, he was in charge of drafting and implementing the regulatory and strategic agenda of the European association ETNO. He then took on management positions for more than 11 years within the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA), which he headed for five years. There, in 2019, he became Director of European Affairs, in charge of following up the vice-chairmanship of ERGA, the European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Medial Services. In that framework, he constantly worked to improve the level playing field for all market players by contributing in particular to regulatory policies relating to the liability of online platforms. He has then been appointed as a Member of the Council and is assuming his duties in September 2021.

Luc Tapella

Director, Institut Luxembourgeois de Régulation (ILR)

Luc Tapella started his career as auditor at Coopers & Lybrand and at the Luxemburgish bank BCEE (Banque et Caisse d’Epargne de l’État), after graduating with an MSc in Economics from the University of Aix-en-Provence (France).
Six years later, in 1999, Luc joined one of Europe’s most important private satellite operator, SES ASTRA. Within a space of three years, he progressed from Marketing Project Coordinator in the Marketing and Commercial Department to Assistant of the director in the Marketing Department. In 2002, he moved to SATLYNX, an SES subsidiary, where he gained experience as a Senior Finance and Administration Manager and as a member of the executive committee.
Luc Tapella began his career with ILR (Institut Luxembourgeois de Régulation) in 2005 and worked as the head of the Department of Economic Studies, and Department of Accounting and Administration up until 2010. Over these years, he was also responsible of the postal sector.
Before becoming Director of the ILR in May 2015, Luc Tapella was the Chief Financial and Administrative Officer for Wagner Management, the lead company for the Wagner Group and member of the executive committee.

Olivier Adam

General advisor in security and internal control, FPS Mobility and Transport

Olivier has a Master's degree in Social and Military Sciences from the Royal Military Academy. He was a Unit Commander in the Reconnaissance troops before specializing in Intelligence and then teaching those topics at the Defense College. He then joined the FPS Mobility and Transports as general advisor for security and internal control.

Georges Ataya

Professor, founder and Academic Director of Digital and information security management at SBS-EM (now SLL)

Co-Founder of the Belgian Cybersecurity Coalition

Co-founder DPO Circle

Member of the Advisory Board: Agoria, BECI, CIONET

Member of the Belgian Federal Audit Committee

Founder at Ataya & partners, spin-off from EY TSRS in 2002

Past International Vice President at ISACA

Past Partner Ernst & Young

Past Deputy International CIO ITT World Directories

Co-Author COBIT4 (IT Governance framework), CISM and CGEIT (Certification credentials in Security Management and IT Governance). ISACA Research foundation, ill., USA

Jocelyn Aubert

Research & Technology Associate, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST)

Jocelyn Aubert obtained two master’s degrees, one in IT Security Management (from Uni.Luxembourg) and the second in Human-computer interaction (from Uni.metz – France). As a Research and Technology Associate in the Trustworthy Data Systems group of the Reliable Distributed Systems Unit of the IT for Innovative Services department at LIST, Jocelyn Aubert contributes to different projects around two main themes: Information Security Management and Cyber Security.
His main areas of competences in Information Security Management include Security Management, Security Assurance, Risk Management, IT Compliance with standards best practices and laws (e.g., ISO/IEC 27001, Telecoms Framework directive - Article 13a, NIS Directive, PSDC, CSSF 12/544, etc.).
Jocelyn Aubert also managed different national and European projects including EU FP7 STREP MICIE, CELTIC BUGYO Beyond, CEF Telecom NISDUC, H2020 PRECINCT.
He is a Lecturer and trainer in Information Security Management Systems (Université de Lorraine, Institut Supérieur de l'Économie (ISEC) Luxembourg, House of Training Luxembourg).
He is also a certified ISO/IEC 27001 Auditor and TIPA Assessor for ITIL.

Evy Bawin

Legal Advisor, Belgian Institute for Postal services and Telecommunications (BIPT)

Evy has been a legal advisor at BIPT since 2020, where she immediately plunged herself into tackling legal issues covering a wide range of topics. At the moment, her main legal focus is mainly on the security of electronic communications networks and services, radio equipment conformity and artificial intelligence. Evy participates in several Working Groups on telecom security at EU level, such as the relevant workstreams within the NIS Cooperation Group and BEREC.

 

Sheila Becker

Head of Network and Information Systems’ Security, Institut Luxembourgeois de Régulation (ILR)

After her PhD graduation in 2012 from University of Luxembourg and University of Lorraine, Sheila worked at ILR (Institut luxembourgeois de Régulation) in the telecom sector before joining in 2016 the Luxembourg Armed Forces as head of the cyberdefence team and was soon afterwards seconded to the Directorate of Defence as cyberdefence advisor.
Meanwhile in 2019 she found her way back to ILR as head of their new cybersecurity team, which is the single point of contact for Luxembourg for the NIS Directive as well as in charge of its transposition for all the sectors except for the financial sector. She always wanted to support other women; therefore, she is especially grateful that she is vice-president for Women Cyber Force since February 2021 and thus can be promoting and supporting women in the cyber domain.

Luk Bruynseels

Chief Product & Technology Officer, Telenet

Cédric Cecotti

Acting CISO, Infrabel

Cédric Cecotti has a strong engineering background in Telecommunications and extensive knowledge of the railway sector. He works at Infrabel (the Belgian Railway Infrastructure Manager) for 23 years as head of telecommunications strategy. Since 2020, he has been Infrabel's acting CISO with the main responsibility of defining the company's information security strategy and ensuring its implementation with the support of the Infrabel Corporate Information Security Office (I-CISO) team.

Hervé Cholez

Research & Technology Associate, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST)

Hervé Cholez received in 2008 his M.Sc. degree in computer science, specialised in security of information and communication systems from the University Paul Verlaine, Metz, France. Since 2010, he is a research and technology associate at the Luxembourg Institute of Science of Technology (LIST) in the Trustworthy Data Systems group of the Reliable Distributed Systems Unit of the IT for Innovative Services department.
His research interests are mainly in the fields of security risk management, information security, cybersecurity, and standardization. Recently, he contributed to research projects related to the cybersecurity of critical infrastructures and essential services, in particular by contributing to develop a regulatory framework and models meeting the requirements of the European NIS directive and its transposition concerning measures for a high common level of security of network and information systems. He is also active in the ISO/IEC SC27 international standardization committee about IT security techniques.

Fabrice Clément

CISO, Proximus

Fabrice Clément is leading the Security Governance and Investigations department of Proximus. He is co-founder and Board member of the Belgian Cyber Security Coalition. He is also treasurer and Board member of the European Telecommunications Association ETIS and a Board member of Proximus Ada, the Center of Excellence in AI and cybersecurity.
Fabrice Clément oversees all cybersecurity and business continuity matters for the Proximus Group. The mission of his organization is to ensure business continuity and to protect the company’s business, operations, and reputation against internal and external threats, as well as to collaborate with the governmental and judicial authorities in the fight against crime.
He entered the Proximus Group in 1993, holding successively various management positions in the development of the telecommunications network and in the field of information technology.
He is Civil Engineer in Electricity and Telecommunications from the University of Mons.

Kaspar Johannes Clos

Responsible Disclosure and CSIRT Collaboration Expert, European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA)

Johannes discovered his interest in computers initially through his passion for audio engineering and signal processing. After discovering the power of cryptography he got interested in information security and the political implications of technology while. After receiving his diploma in computer science from Technische Universität Darmstadt he followed initial research (e.g., at Fraunhofer SIT and IGD) and network security work before starting at BSI’s national CSIRT section CERT-Bund. While supporting the team in various ways (vulnerability disclosure, abuse automation, OSS development) he cultivated a passion for CSIRT collaboration and is now supporting ENISA’s Operational Cooperation Unit where he works for the Network Secretariat and the EU VDB implementation.

Roeland de Koning

Director Public Security, Capgemini Invent

For more than 25 years Mr. De Koning fulfills advisory roles in the security domain for the Dutch national government. Many of them in the role of project leader of an advisory team. For various clients such as European Commission, ENISA, Department of Justice and Security, NL- NCSC, Police and Defense, he has carried out assignments in the area of cyber security. Last years he has been responsible for realizing European cooperation on cybersecurity (MeliCERTes, Empowering European ISACs) on behalf of the EC-DG Connect and ENISA. An important part of these assignments is bringing together stakeholders in the cybersecurity domain within critical infrastructures, initiating solutions for information sharing and creating a trusted environment. Within Capgemini Invent NL he is acting CISO and lead of advisory work for public security.

Philippe Defraigne

Founding director, Cullen International

Philippe Defraigne is a founding director of Cullen International, a company monitoring regulatory developments in telecommunications, digital economy, media, postal, competition law and sustainability. He is an economist by training and has spent the last 30 years analysing telecommunications regulation and market developments. He is a regular fixture on the conference circuit, frequently speaking at and chairing events in Europe, Latin America and MENA.

Alberto Di Felice

Director for Infrastructure, Privacy and Security Policy, DIGITALEUROPE

Alberto Di Felice leads the Infrastructure, Privacy and Security teams at DIGITALEUROPE, the trade association representing the digital technology industry in Europe. He is responsible for data protection, cybersecurity and telecoms.
Alberto joined DIGITALEUROPE in February 2018, having previously spent seven years at Qualcomm, a world leader in mobile technologies. His work there cut across EU technology policy areas such as privacy, telecoms regulation and the impact of digital on innovation and business models, including verticals such as connected cars and mobile health.
Alberto is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/E). He holds degrees in law and European studies from the universities of Teramo and Trento in Italy as well as a masters in diplomacy from the Institute for International Political Studies in Milan.

Carmelo Dimauro

Coordinator of the D4RIG activities, National Centre of Competence for Cybersecurity (NC3)

Carmelo joined LHC (formerly SMILE) in 2021 to design and develop a Cyber Threat Observatory.
He is a senior manager with high level experience in risk management and industrial business continuity planning. He has an extended knowledge in supporting the public and private stakeholders involved in the risk-based decision-making processes and emergency management planning, in particular involving scenarios related interdependent critical infrastructure systems.
He has a consolidated knowledge in defining and implementing capability-based approaches to enable and foster collaborative risk management practices in the context of public-private collaborations.
In the past, he worked at the EC DG JRC - Joint Research Centre where, among other research activities, he contributed with a series of strategic studies to the definition of Council Directive 2008/114/EC of 8 December 2008 on the identification and designation of European critical infrastructures and the assessment of the need to improve their protection, with a series of strategic studies.
In the context of National Centre of Competence for Cybersecurity (NC3) activities, he coordinate the  D4RIG activities (D4RIG - Data for Risk, Innovation and Governance) and is responsible for developing innovative approaches and methods to exploit data and information on cyber risks to support research and innovation activities for the Luxembourg ecosystem.

Anaïs Druart

Security Implementation, Infrabel

Anaïs holds a Master's degree in Clinical Psychology and a Master's degree in Business Administration. Since 2023, she is responsible for the Infrabel Corporate Information Security Office (I-CISO) at Infrabel (the Belgian Railway Infrastructure Manager), which aims to implement the company's information security program in accordance with the NIS Act. This program includes governance, change management, communication, awareness and training.

Alexandre Dulaunoy

Head of CIRCL, Computer Incident Response Center Luxembourg (CIRCL)

Alexandre Dulaunoy encountered his first computer in the eighties, and he disassembled it to know how the thing works. While pursuing his logical path towards information security and free software, he worked as senior security network consultant at different places (e.g. Ubizen, now Cybertrust). He co-founded a startup called Conostix, which specialised in information security management. For the past 6 years, he was the manager of global information security at SES, a leading international satellite operator. Since 2010 he is working at CIRCL in the research and operational fields. He is also a lecturer in information security at Paul-Verlaine University in Metz and the University of Luxembourg.  He is also the lead developer of various open source tools including cve-search and member of the MISP core team.

Paul Gibson

Team Lead Infosec & Compliance, National Railway Company of Belgium

Paul joined YPTO/NMBS in September 2021 and currently leads the Infosec and Compliance team responsible for the ISMS. Paul has thirty years’ experience in IT/IS, initially focusing on development and management roles before moving into IS in 2016. Originally from Scotland, he has spent most of his career outside the UK in domains such as law enforcement, government & telecoms as well as 13 years in the Luxembourgish financial sector.

Evangelos Kantas

Cybersecurity Expert – European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA)

Evangelos Kantas is an information and communication systems engineer, focusing on information security. Since 2021 he works at ENISA (EU Agency for Cybersecurity), where he is involved in areas of cybersecurity policy development and implementation, specifically for core internet, cloud services, and vulnerabilities. He is a coordinator and co-author of multiple ENISA reports covering various aspects of information security. In the past he worked in Ernst and Young and Vodafone, where he was involved among others in security policies, security architecture, security by design, and Governance Risk and Compliance.

Johan Klykens

Director Cybersecurity Certification Authority, Center for Cyber security Belgium (CCB)

After working for 18 years in the private sector on compliance and quality assurance in the micro-electronics and medical field, Johan Klykens joined the public service and more specifically the Belgian accreditation body. He was involved in supporting the CCB, the Cybersecurity Centre Belgium, on accreditation matters during the transposition of the NIS Directive and the development of the Cybersecurity Act. Johan, joined the CCB in June 2022, as the Director of the Certification Authority of the CCB. In this position he is responsible for the market surveillance of products, processes and services certified under the CSA Act and he represents the Belgian authorities in the ECCG and participates to numerous ENISA working groups. Next to that, he is a qualified assessor on the main accreditation standards for BELAC,  and involved in standardization as the president of the Belgian standardization mirror group on conformity assessment and member of Belgian standardization mirror groups on cybersecurity.

Michaela Kollau

Policy Officer, European Commission, DG Energy

Michaela Kollau is currently working for the European Commission at the Directorate General for Energy in the directorate B: Just Transition, Consumers, Energy Efficiency and Innovation. Within this context, she works in the unit dealing with energy security and safety and covers topics related to cybersecurity in the energy sector. Prior to her current position, she worked in the unit dealing with consumer issues in the smart grids team.

She joined the European Commission in 2014 following a career in the Austrian Regulatory Authority for the electricity and gas market.  Ms Kollau studied in Austria (Graz), the US (New Mexico) and in France (Nice - Sophia Antipolis) and holds master degrees in economics and environmental system sciences.

Nicolas Lempereur

Engineer-Advisor, Belgian Institute for Postal services and Telecommunications (BIPT)

After two years working as a telecommunications and network engineer, Nicolas started working for the Network Security Department at BIPT in 2022. He’s responsible for the coordination of Critical Infrastructures inspections and the management of the risk assessment process in the electronic communications and digital infrastructure sector.

Tim Mangold

Legal Advisor, Institut Luxembourgeois de Régulation (ILR)

Tim Mangold is a legal advisor at the Institut Luxembourgeois de Régulation (ILR), the competent NIS authority of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg for all NIS sectors, except the financial sectors. Previously, Tim was admitted to the Luxembourg Bar and worked as a lawyer in several top tier law firms. He now assists the cybersecurity team of the ILR in all legal matters, participates in International and European Working & Expert Groups related to Information System & Network Security, and is involved in the implementation of the NIS Directive and the preparations for the implementation of the NIS 2 Directive in Luxembourg.

Arnaud Martin

Expert Cybersecurity Regulation and Standardisation, Agoria

Arnaud is Expert Cybersecurity Regulation and Standardisation at Agoria, the federation of the technology industry. In this role he is informing and sensitising Agoria’s members on cybersecurity legislations and standards, collecting opinions on their industrial realities to assess the policies’ impact, and thereby making the link with the other actors in these legislations and standards. Furthermore, he coordinates the Belgian cybersecurity standardisation technical committees and the Agoria’s working group on cybersecurity regulations, where the NIS2 Directive has been identified as a top priority. He holds a bioengineer degree in chemistry from the University of Louvain, completed by an Executive Master in Management at the Solvay Brussels School.

Gilles Massen

Chair of the Board, GÉANT Association

Gilles is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the GÉANT Association, the organisation that brings together European national research and education networks (NRENs) and runs the pan-European GÉANT network for scientific excellence, research, education and innovation. His primary job, however, is the management of the Restena Foundation, the Luxembourg NREN, which bears the responsibility not only for the academic network, but also for the .LU country-code top-level domain, an essential infrastructure. With his engineering background, Gilles touched over time all the aspects of running important infrastructure, from electrical installations over systems, networks, security up to international policy (in no particular order). Gilles is also member of the board of directors of CENTR, the Council of European National Top-level Domain Registries and acts as COO for the Luxembourg internet exchange LU-CIX.

Tim Masy

Engineer-advisor, Belgian Institute for Postal services and Telecommunications (BIPT)

Tim has been an Engineer-Advisor for the Network Security Department at BIPT since 2016. He works on the security of electronic communications networks and services, critical infrastructure protection, NIS and emergency telecommunications. Tim participates in Working Groups such as the ECASEC WG and the relevant workstreams within the NIS Cooperation Group and BEREC.

Sascha Maurer

Cybersecurity Officer, Institut Luxembourgeois de Régulation (ILR)

Sascha has joined the ILR in early 2023 as Cybersecurity Officer. He is responsible for the supervision of the aviation sector and digital infrastructures. Sascha has a particular interest for the field of cyber governance and is particularly passionate about cyber policy. Previously, he has worked in the field of Cyber Diplomacy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Philippe Meulders

Information Security Specialist, Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois (CFL)

Team member of the IN / CISO Division of Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois (CFL) since 2020. As GRC & GDPR Expert, Philippe works on :

• the compliance to the NIS Directive, PCI-DSS, (…)
• the IS security & risk analysis of CFL projects,
• the Information Security maturity assessment of CFL subsidiaries & providers,
• the CFL Ransomware plan,
• the Information Systems Security Plan (ISSP) (policies, procedures, …),
• the IS controls,
• the IS KPI (Key Performance indicators), …

Previously, Philippe has been working 2 years as Information Security Officer and 13 years as IT auditor at European Fund Administration (Luxembourg), 4 years as E-banking Project Manager at Banque de Luxembourg, and 4 years as consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Jan Meuris

Security Officer, Port of Antwerp-Bruges

Jan Meuris is a cybersecurity enthusiast working for Port of Antwerp-Bruges. He’s a former Army Infantry Officer and holds a Criminology degree from the University of Brussels (VUB) and a Postgraduate of Disaster Management from the University of Antwerp (UA). As a member of the Cyber Resilience Team he assists the CISO in the field of Governance, Risk and Compliance and functions as a Liaison Officer between multiple internal and external stakeholders. Furthermore, he led the implementation of various cybersecurity projects within Port of Antwerp-Bruges.

Jasper Nagtegaal

Director Digital Resilience, Dutch Authority for Digital Infrastructure

Jasper Nagtegaal is responsible for the directorate of Digital Resilience within the Dutch Authority for Digital Infrastructure. In that role he is responsible for all operations on certification, supervision and enforcement under regulation of EECC, NIS/NIS2, CSA and eIDAS/eIDAS2 as well on certain public-private regulated ecosystems on eID and e-procurement. Over the past years he developed experience on implementing and building supervision on digital regulation like NIS and eIDAS in the Netherlands. In those years he also worked on strengthening cooperative supervision and combined reporting form the different regulators in the Netherlands.

Levi Nietvelt

Business Manager, Beltug

Beltug aims at breaking down the barriers companies face when building their digital strategy and tackling the challenges of the connected organization. Ensuring cyber resilience, as a pre-requisite for a successful digital transformation is a prime objective of Beltug.
Levi Nietvelt pushes for the issues Beltug members find important at the right policy level, shares the security task force of more than 50 security professionals from large Belgian based organizations and organizes security related sessions, dealing with issues such as security strategy and architecture, cyber incidence response plans or zero trust network architecture.
Levi Nietvelt has more than 15 years of European and International work experience in public affairs, international relations and economic and legal analysis. He worked as a consultant, a policy advocate and an assistant in the European Parliament. He is a London School of Economics and KULeuven alumnus.

Sébastien Pineau

Lead Partnership Officer, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST)

After 8 years of auditing in French and Luxembourg consulting companies, Sébastien joined LIST in 2006 as an engineer. He has worked as project manager, unit manager and program manager in the regulatory field. He is now Lead Partnership Officer attached to the ITIS department (IT for Innovative Services) and is particularly involved in the LIST activities addressing regulation, information security and business transformation. He works in close cooperation with national regulatory authorities as well as companies from finance, energy, defence and IT sectors.

Peter S. Bentzen

Deputy Head of Division, Danish Energy Agency (DEA)

Peter S. Bentzen has been working at the Danish Energy Agency for the past 10 years on a number of different subjects ranging from CO2-Emissions, Renewable energy, Industrial CHP, District heating, energy efficiency and support schemes of various kinds.
For the past 3 years, Peter has been working at the DEA risk preparedness division with an initial focus on managing and performing audits among the approximately 100 companies currently under DEA legislation (electricity and gas). This as team leader for the 10+ people carrying out audits in the Danish energy sector.
For the past year Peter has been the Deputy Head of Division for the combined Risk and preparedness Division (30+ people). Recently the implementation of the NIS2 and CER directives has been the primary focus.
Peter has a master’s degree from Roskilde University in Technological and socioeconomic planning and holds a number of relevant certifications.

Svetlana Schuster

Head of Sector Implementation and Review of the NIS Directive at the Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) of the European Commission, Unit H2 Cybersecurity and Digital Privacy Policy

Mrs Svetlana Schuster is Head of Sector Implementation and Review of the NIS Directive at the Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) of the European Commission, Unit H2 Cybersecurity and Digital Privacy Policy.She joined the European Commission in October 2011 and worked until August 2015 for the unit dealing with the implementation of the EU regulatory framework on electronic communications at DG CONNECT. Mrs Schuster is a fully qualified German lawyer, graduated from Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt/O., Germany and Vrije Universiteit Brussels (LL.M in International and European law).

Michiel Steltman

Director Digital infrastructure Association NL (DINL) / Co-founder Online Trust Coalition (OTC)

Michiel Steltman is Co-founder of the Online Trust Coalition (OTC) and Managing Director of the Digital infrastructure Association NL (DINL), a coalition of organizations representing providers of core Internet services such as colocation, networks, cloud, hosting and domain registries.
Steltman is the voice of this industry towards government, politics and the media. He has a strong technology and business background, with over 30 years of international experience in the IT and online industry. Other activities include his participation in various PPP initiatives in the area of cyber security, cybercrime and online abuse mitigation.

Céline Tarraube

Adviser Digital and Innovation, Fédération des Industriels Luxembourgeois (FEDIL)

Céline joined FEDIL as an adviser in 2015 to work on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) related topics. Over the years, she expanded her tasks to digital transformation topics such as Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence, Data policy, Cloud, etc. She graduated in Biochemistry (Paris) and in Marketing (Bordeaux). Before joining FEDIL, Céline was in charge of Marketing and Communication of the IT One platform at Farvest and organised among others the annual “ICTSpring Europe” and “IT One Gala”. Before that, she was the owner of a retail shop in parapharmaceutical cosmetics in the city centre of Luxembourg. She began her carrier in Luxembourg in 2006 within Luxinnovation and launched the BioHealth Cluster for Health Sciences and Technologies.

Pierre-François Vandenhaute

Engineer-Advisor, Belgian Institute for Postal services and Telecommunications (BIPT)

Pierre-Francois Vandenhaute works for the Network Security Department of the BIPT. He is involved in the supervision and enforcement of the EECC and the NISD for the digital infrastructure, as well as in sectoral crisis coordination. He has joined the BIPT after a career in the Belgian army where he had the opportunity to lead various IT projects that led him to develop his skills and expertise. He holds a Civil Engineer degree from the Royal Military Academy, completed by a Specialised Master in Technological & Industrial Management at the Solvay Brussels School.

Valéry Vander Geeten

Legal Officer Senior & DPO, Center for Cyber security Belgium (CCB)

Valéry Vander Geeten is the Legal Officer and DPO of the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium (CCB). He has been the project manager of the implementation of the NIS directive in Belgium and has actively participated in the activities of the NIS Cooperation Group. He holds a Law degree and a LL.M. degree in public and administrative Law both from the University of Brussels (ULB). He is a former lawyer at the Brussels Bar and teacher assistant at the ULB. His interests are around cybersecurity, cybercrime, data protection, IT and public laws. Valéry is the Legal Officer of the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium (as well of the federal service CERT.be which is a part of the CCB) and he is a former lawyer at the Brussels Bar. He is in charge of the legal aspect of the activities of the CCB and the CERT.be, including the implementation of the NIS directive (EU directive 2016/1148) in Belgium. Valéry is also a teacher assistant at the Law Faculty of the University of Brussels (ULB).

Bram Verckens

Head of Unit High Surveillance Energy Infrastructure and Products, FPS Economy

Bram Verckens has been working at the DG Energy of the FPS Economy, SME’s, Self-employed and Energy for the last 10 years. His working experience stretches over various topics in the subject of safety and security of energy products, installations and infrastructure. Main responsibilities include the supervision of and/or lead in, amongst others, the market surveillance of energy-related products regulated by safety directives, Electro Magnetic Compatibility and energy label, but also the technical regulations of electrical installations and the surveillance of the inspection bodies active in this field. Three years ago, supervision on the security of critical elements of the energy sector was added to this range of topics. All legislation concerning physical and cyber security, such as the NIS directive, EPCIP framework and the screening of personnel in the energy sector, including active involvement in and close collaboration with stakeholders on the implementation of the NIS2 and CER directives and the network code on cybersecurity for cross-border electricity transport, is now part of the responsibilities of the Unit High Surveillance Energy Infrastructure and Products. Bram Verckens holds a master degree in Physics from Ghent University. He has given several trainings in the field of Market Surveillance of energy-related products, on request of the European Commission.

Machteld Vrieze

Teammanager Auditing, Dutch Authority for Digital Infrastructure

Machteld Vrieze is a manager at the Dutch Authority for Digital Infrastructure. In recent years she has worked as a policy advisor on supervision, with NIS, trust services and electronic identities as her main areas of interest. She has chaired the European workstream for EU authorities on digital service providers in the past 4 years. She recently initiated a new workstream for supervising authorities in the NIS Cooperation Group. She has a background in law and computer science and work experience at various levels of government and in the Netherlands and abroad.

Gérard Wagener

Operator, Computer Incident Response Center Luxembourg (CIRCL)

Gérard Wagener holds a bi-national Ph.D. in computer science by the University of Luxembourg and INPL Nancy, France from 2011. He worked for 4 years in the global information security team at SES, a leading international satellite operator. He is currently working for the Computer Incident Response Center Luxembourg, and has done for 5 years. His doctoral research focuses on adaptive decoying systems to improve intelligence gathering on attackers in computer networks. Gérard comes from the malware research community, where he worked on projects such as sandboxes for monitoring and analysing malicious software. In addition to these hands-on activities, his scientific work has investigated malware classification using phylogenetic trees and intelligent high-interaction honeypots driven by game theory. At CIRCL, he is doing incident response and evidence analysis, project management.