Look back at the CONCORDIA Open Door 2021
In its third edition, Concordia Open Door (COD) continued the series of annual meetups for the European heterogenous cybersecurity community.
If you’ve never heard about it, it’s time to be aware that CONCORDIA is organizing these events to connect all the cybersecurity stakeholders in Europe to create valuable exchanges between academia, industry, public bodies, and policymakers. You can learn about the first two editions here:
COD 2021 was a networking event that brought together different sub-groups of the European cybersecurity community despite the pandemic situation.
Initially, we prepared a hybrid event with our partner BitDefender as host in Romania to set up the physical venue. Unfortunately, the umpteenth wave of COVID cases and the restrictions that followed forced COD2021 to be an entirely virtual event but with the constant support of BitDefender.
COD2021 took place on the 20th and 21st of October, always in line with the European Cybersecurity Month. We addressed two main topics: “Cybersecurity Threats and Certification” and “European Cybersecurity Competence Centre and Community”.
On the first day, a keynote followed by a panel discussed the threat landscape of cybersecurity and how to fill the gap in novel technologies. The incredible amounts of malicious events brought a need for machine learning methods to fight attacks. At the same time, the machine learning models became targets themselves because they are at the core of many autonomous systems. One of the potential solutions is the creation of new certification techniques that consider non-deterministic behaviour. The product certification was also the topic of the second panel, where we discussed the obstacles and challenges.
On the second day, Mr Miguel Gonzales-Sancho from the European Commission and temporary director of the European Cybersecurity Competence Center (ECCC) presented this new centre established earlier in 2021 and its first steps. The next panel included representatives of the European Commission, CONCORDIA, and members of the NSG. It highlighted that the ECCC needs input from the community, such as creative ideas and stakeholders’ views for the investment priorities. Thus, creating a fast information loop between the different them and the ECCC in a look-alike COD engagement is essential.
You can still find the whole program on the event website. However, go and check the YouTube playlist so that you can watch one of the sessions of COD2021.