Israeli VC firm Magenta Venture Partners announced today a new venture capital fund targeting $100 million. The new fund had its initial closing in October 2018 and is planning its final closing in 2019.

Magenta Venture Partners is an equal partnership between Mitsui & Co. Ltd., one of the largest trading and investment companies in Japan, Ori Israely, and Ran Levitzky, two seasoned Israeli professionals from its venture capital industry

The fund specializes in early-stage investments in Israeli and Israeli-related technology startups in multiple domains including Automotive, Mobility, AI, Smart Cities, Industry 4.0, Enterprise Software and Fintech.

The four partners of the fund include Ori Israely, formerly of Motorola Solutions Venture Capital and Giza Venture Capital, Hiroshi Takeuchi of Mitsui who has relocated now to Israel after 15 years of venture investment experience in Japan and the US; Ran Levitzky, formerly from Viola Ventures where he co-led investments in early stage startups, and earlier held roles at Amdocs, Microsoft, and Verint Systems; and Atsushi Mizuno from Mitsui’s investment arm who has over 10 years of experience investing into Israeli companies and who has been living in Israel for the past 4 years.

 “Our name Magenta, is a blend of blue and red – the colors of the Israeli and Japanese flags” explains Ori Israely - Managing General Partner and a veteran of the Israeli VC industry, “it signifies the strengths of Israel and Japan”. Israely added: “our fund is a financially focused, but we look to invest in startups that not only look for capital but also seek value driven by the team’s experience in Japan, EU and the USA. We also leverage our investors to analyze and validate investments, assist the portfolio, and help all the startups we engage during this process.”  

"Investors in Magenta Venture Partners include Mitsui & Co. Ltd. and Koito Manufacturing Co. Ltd. who are looking to work with the fund to identify innovative technologies in Israel” said Hiroshi Takeuchi – Managing General Partner. “Magenta will also work on introducing benefits of cooperation with such LPs to maximize return on investments, expose LPs to innovation generated by our portfolio companies and also from our deal flow.”

“Magenta offers unique added value in Israel’s venture capital scene,” said Ran Levitzky, General Partner at the firm. “Israeli entrepreneurs have a clear understanding that building a significant company requires a variety of products that are marketed not only in the west but globally including the east and Japan in particular.” Mr. Levitzky added that the fact that all the investors in Magenta are large Japanese companies, provides significant added value to Israeli entrepreneurs and startups who aim to build global leading companies.

The fund is also proud to add to its Venture Advisory Board Mr. Ron Shvili, former head of the technology center for 8200 unit and currently the CTO & VP of Technology and Information Systems of Cellcom, a leading telecommunications group in Israel, who will contribute from his experience to the success of the fund.  

Mr. Yokoya, Executive Vice President, of Koito Manufacturing Co. Ltd., said, “Koito as the No.1 manufacturer of automotive headlights in the world is committed to the next generation of autonomous driving and smart cities technologies. For that, Koito will partner with Magenta to explore collaboration opportunities with startups in Israel through our investment in Magenta Fund. We’re fully confident in the team and delighted to partner with Magenta in Koito’s exploration of new technologies in Israel.” 

Mr. Kikuchihara, Managing Officer & Chief Operating Officer of Corporate Development Business Unit of Mitsui & Co. Ltd., said, “Mitsui has been engaged in venture capital investment practice around the world for decades, including 8 years of investments in Israel. Our partnership in the Magenta Fund is the proof of our commitment to this country which is one of the centers of innovation in the world, and we would further strengthen our investment and business promotion activities in this country from now on.”

Ingenico Group, the global leader in seamless payment, launched its innovative payment-enabled chatbot, which uses natural language processing (NLP) from IBM Watson to create a smooth customer experience. Watson capabilities allow Ingenico’s chatbot to better understand users’ requests once they have been inputted, whatever they may be. It can better interpret nuances in language and phrasing, handling natural variations in the way individuals communicate. As a result, the bot can respond quickly and effectively enabling it to meet each user’s specific needs, in a wide range of different languages. The new AI component reduces steps consumers have to take in order to complete purchases allowing merchants to boost conversion.

The chatbot, created in collaboration with JoinedApp, incorporates Ingenico’s secure payment API to enhance a business’s messaging app user experience. It enables customers to purchase products and services safely and securely within a messaging app’s chat function, bringing an end-to-end customer experience to the chat platform. By enabling payments within the messaging app environment, merchants can boost conversion by reducing the steps that consumers have to take in order to complete their purchase.

The chatbot is ideal for use in the retail, hospitality, leisure and travel sectors. It can be active 24 hours a day, seven days a week, enabling a business to communicate with customers and handle transactions around the clock. Moreover, it allows businesses to gather valuable information on bot users’ needs and desires, enabling them to tailor their offering to meet their customers’ changing requirements.

Speaking about the benefits of the chatbot’s payment capability, Gabriel de Montessus, SVP Global Online (Retail BU) for Ingenico Group, said: “This new AI-powered capability enhances user experience and improves conversion significantly. Thanks to IBM Watson AI services, users simply tell the bot their desired purchase and submit payment and delivery information – achieving a truly seamless payment experience for consumers.”

The chatbot is already available on the international payment market, showing up to five times better conversion rates compared to mobile websites.

MSTS, a global B2B payments and credit solutions provider, today announced 4MD Medical as its first Credit as a Service (CaaS) customer using the Magento eCommerce platform. 4MD Medical, a national distributor of medical, physical therapy, pharmaceutical equipment and supplies for the healthcare field, will engage CaaS tools to ease the B2B payments journey for its customers. 

With Credit as a Service from MSTS, businesses can issue credit in less than a minute, automate the customer onboarding process, and apply unique B2B customer invoicing, accounts payable and payment term requirements – providing their customers flexibility and an enhanced experience. 

“We’re excited to bring 4MD Medical on board to improve their B2B payments and credit processes,” said Brandon Spear, president of MSTS. “4MD is a leader in their space, making medical supply shopping easier and more convenient, and we align very well with that mission.” 

MSTS’ Credit as a Service has a suite of tools to accelerate commerce, including InvoiceMe, which will integrate into 4MD Medical’s eCommerce platform at checkout and provide a payment alternative to credit cards – thereby reducing costs. Developers from both companies are currently collaborating on the development of a Magento plug-in that utilizes InvoiceMe, slated to be available in Q1 2019.

“Working with MSTS, we know we’re getting more than a software solution,” said Dave Schwartz, executive vice president at 4MD Medical. “We’re getting a devoted team of experts dedicated to working alongside us to solve our customers’ biggest pain points.”

This announcement follows MSTS’ launch of CaaS for SMBs, which took place in Q4 of last year. The original CaaS enterprise solution was re-imagined to scale with small and mid-market businesses looking to grow, especially in retail and eCommerce.

Yolt has today announced it is has launched its open beta for all iOS and Android users in both Italy and France. From today, users will be able to download the open beta application free of charge from the App Store and Play Store to get instant access to all of Yolt’s features.

Furthermore, after successful launches in Italy and France in 2018, yolt will continue its mission to become a pan-European platform. Primarily this means support for international accounts in the Yolt app.  

Frank Jan Risseeuw, CEO, Yolt, comments:

“We’d like to say a huge thank you to all of our early bird users in both Italy and France and our wider Yolt community who have been instrumental in getting us to where we are today. It’s their helpful feedback, suggestions and ideas that have allowed us to tweak Yolt and make it available for everyone across all three markets. We are very excited to continue our mission and expand our pan-European presence empowering more users to unthink money across the globe!”

The UNLOCK Company DMCC, a platform that provides information, intelligence, insights and news pertaining to the Blockchain sector, is holding its second series of the UNLOCK Blockchain Forum in Dubai, UAE, on 15-16 January at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, DIFC.

This year du, from Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC), is presenting UNLOCK, where it will be showcasing its blockchain solutions alongside partners that include Grape Technology, ConsenSys, miCity and Dhonor among others.

UNLOCK, which is being held in its second year, has announced the participation of over 56 global and regional speakers that include prominent blockchain names such as Nick Spanos, CEO and founder of Blocktech and Zap, H.E. Wesam Lootah, CEO of Smart Dubai Government, as well as Mr. Osman Sultan, CEO of EITC, and prominent government officials from KSA that include Mr. Mohsen Al Zahrani, Vice President of Strategy and Excellence Saudi Payments (Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority), Mr. Bart Brands, President of European Blockchain Foundation, Dr. Marwan Al Zarouni, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Blockchain Center, and many more prominent speakers.

To inaugurate UNLOCK 2019, Mr. Sultan will address the event’s participants with a keynote speech on day one.

Mr. Sultan said: “As blockchain technology matures in the region, the potential impact and value of this technology is showing real promise through its ability to transform our society and enrich the business climate. du is proud to be at the forefront of bringing blockchain initiatives into fruition within the UAE, and presenting a key event such as UNLOCK is a key step towards encouraging all stakeholders to play a role in unlocking the next transformative phase in the future of this disruptive technology.”

Mr. Walid Abou Zaki, Founder & CEO of UNLOCK, stated: “We are very pleased to welcome du as our title sponsor for UNLOCK 2019 edition. du has been a strong supporter of innovative technologies including blockchain. We were honored to have them with us as sponsors in 2018 and are pleased that they have decided to participate with us again strongly. We believe that the role of telecom operators is essential in the proliferation of blockchain applications and solutions across various industries.”  

In October 2018, du announced that it would be developing the first Blockchain Platform as a Service (BPaaS), a cloud native blockchain infrastructure that can provision private blockchain networks with a high level of customization, support multiple consensus algorithms with monitoring, managing capabilities and smart contract capabilities, and will support multiple blockchain frameworks in the near future.

du will be exhibiting at UNLOCK to showcase its solutions and platform alongside its partners. UNLOCK will have more than 20 blockchain startups showcasing their solutions at the forum.

• Product Reviews
• 14.01.2019 11:23 am

ABOUT THE SOLUTION

axiomaBlue is an innovative cloud-based environment that provides best-of-breed solutions and tools enabling investment managers to cost efficiently create, implement and scale unique investment strategies. It is a “no compromises” native product that provides fully interoperable and integrated access to Axioma’s entire suite of solutions, such as: 

• Multi-asset-class risk management
• Portfolio construction and optimization
• Performance attribution
• Custom risk models and analytics

axiomaBlue’s sophistication, depth, and customizability are critical because they allow investment managers to tailor and fine-tune their tools to their own investment processes.  

DEMAND FOR THE SOLUTION

axiomaBlue is the result of countless discussions with clients and company’s own sense of what is needed today. It’s no secret that the business of investment management has changed - certainly in the 10 years since the global financial crisis, but the transformation began even before that. Active managers were the first to feel the pain on margins, with the proliferation and success of passive investment options. In order to succeed in today’s changing environment, firms must generate better returns. They want to do it more efficient and cost-effective way. Competition is increasing and margins are shrinking. Technology is another huge issue. In the past, investment firms built their own data centers and systems as a means of maintaining control and security. But two things happened. Investment in those systems lagged in the wake of the global financial crisis, just as cloud-computing began to gain traction. The cloud was initially rejected by the financial industry as too vulnerable from a security point of view. And that left firms struggling with the headaches and costs of trying to maintain and adapt their own legacy systems and technology. 

KEY FEATURES

A combination of three main features differentiates axiomaBlue from existing investment-management offerings and these are: 

• Best-of-Breed

Drive your investment process with the best there is Axioma’s award-winning suite of innovative risk and portfolio solutions and tools, is Built-in axiomaBlue, and thus accessible interoperably via flexible APIs.

• Cloud-Native Technology

axiomaBlue is cloud-native—built for the financial industry on the strengths of secure hyper-scale cloud providers, primarily Microsoft Azure, to take full advantage of the power and ongoing state-of-the-art development of cloud computing.

• Third-Party Options

axiomaBlue’s open environment will include third-party best-of-breed solutions that are either part of this ecosystem or are directly built in axiomaBlue. IBOR, trade management and other functionality, enable axiomaBlue to serve either as an extension of the client’s investment-management system or the system itself.

Finally, axiomaBlue is built on the strengths of hyper-scale cloud provider Microsoft Azure, which leverages a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers, providing unparalleled scalability, reliability, security, encryption, redundancy, and on-demand power. Axioma and Microsoft have partnered to ensure that axiomaBlue remains at the forefront of cloud technology.

For more details please visit: www.axioma.com 

Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the banking software company, today announced a strategic collaboration with Bloomberg to deliver contingency Net Asset Value (NAV) calculations to buy-side institutions.  The company will make its leading Temenos Multifonds Global Accounting product accessible via the Bloomberg Terminal, so it operates with data, analytics, and other investment workflow services Bloomberg offers. This innovative and unique offering allows asset managers to generate NAV estimates independent of and in parallel to their fund administrators, enabling accurate daily oversight, and ensuring continuity of operations in the event of outages. As part of this global collaboration—initially focused in the U.S. and Europe--Bloomberg will build on its strong and trusted relationships within the buy-side industry to provide sales, marketing, and services support. This collaboration opens up a new business opportunity for Temenos of 40,000 buy side firms, of which 2/3 are in North America.

NAV calculations can be impacted by errors and outages with detrimental results for a firm’s fund operations, performance and reputation.  Delivered via Bloomberg, this innovative solution delivers shadow NAV oversight, with no need for onsite infrastructure or associated overhead.  This gives asset managers and other buy-side institutions a scalable and efficient way to validate calculations provided by third-party fund administrators, making the most of Bloomberg’s buy-side reach and Temenos’ fund accounting software and expertise. This offering is complementary to the Temenos Fund Administration product being made available to a new set of addressable customers, including buy-side institutions that have already outsourced their back-office operations to fund administrators. 

Jean-Paul Zammitt, Global Head of Financial Products, Bloomberg, said: “This strategic collaboration with Temenos enables us to help buy-side firms meet their need for dependable and independent NAV oversight, to support operational contingency plans and satisfy investors. By combining Temenos’ distinctive accounting capabilities with Bloomberg's data and services, we will provide asset managers with a more comprehensive investment lifecycle workflow, support their relationships with fund administrators, and pave the way to deliver additional innovative solutions to buy-side institutions in the future.”

Max Chuard, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Temenos, said: “We are excited to partner with Bloomberg, whose capabilities and expertise in the buy-side space are proven and trusted. This highly strategic global collaboration dramatically increases our growth into the USD 5bn buy-side technology space. For Temenos there is the opportunity to grow our reach among asset managers, who already use Bloomberg’s buy-side solutions, as well as alternative investment segments such as hedge funds. We will offer an easy, plug and play solution with a low TCO, starting with NAV oversight and contingency through Bloomberg’s Terminal customers, with a view to unlocking further opportunities into the front and middle office over time.”

Asia Blockchain and Crypto Association ("ABACA") is pleased to announce the launch of CEZEX, Asia's first security token trading platform, by 28 January 2019.

CEZEX, the first licensed overseas virtual currency exchange to launch out of Philippines' Cagayan Economic Zone Authority ("CEZA"), will allow users to trade fiat and crypto currencies, security tokens backed by assets such as stocks, bonds, commodities and real estate, and derivatives including CFD and commodities.

CEZEX, one of the first members of ABACA, is a licensed Offshore Virtual Currency Exchange and Asset-Backed Securities Token Exchange ("OVCE"), regulated and licensed by CEZA, a government owned and controlled corporation set up in 1995 to manage and supervise the development of the Cagayan Special Economic Zone and Freeport (CSEZFP).

"CEZA has since initiated several projects to promote development in the CSEZFP - including the development of the Crypto Valley of Asia ("CVA"), a development by Northern Star Gaming & Resorts Inc ("Northern Star") and Falcon Gain, a property development consortium led by Mr Enrique Gonzalez and Mr. JJ Atencio, to bring economic growth to Northern Luzon."

CVA aims to be home to a new wave of financial technology companies establishing their operations in the CSEZFP. CVA expects to secure investments valued at US$100m over the next 10 years.

CEZA has appointed ABACA as the first Self-Regulatory Organisation ("SRO"). As an SRO, ABACA will make and enforce its own rules among its members or associated persons. CEZA, however, will remain the overall regulator.

CEZEX will offer a licensed, regulated platform for trading multiple traditional asset classes represented by a digital asset with fiat/crypto currency pairing trading which include currencies, security tokens and derivatives. As a fully-licensed digital assets exchange, CEZEX provides companies with a cheaper, faster, easier and shorter listing process while giving users and traders access to a wider variety of trading products under one platform all in a fully regulated, licensed environment.

Mr Enrique Gonzalez, Vice Chairman of ABACA said "The upcoming launch of CEZEX is a significant milestone, not just for CEZEX, but also for CEZA and ABACA as CEZEX is the first licensed Offshore Virtual Currency Exchange and Asset- Backed Securities Token Exchange under the recently-announced CEZA -SRO rules and regulations governing OVCE operators.

We are pleased to launch our first OVCE operator out of CEZA. CEZEX is backed by Pinnacle Digital a digital assets exchange operator, and consultancy firm, IPE Global Pte Ltd. a Singapore based financial technology investment firm; the Phnom Penh Derivatives Exchange and SB Kaikaku Fund a venture capital fund affiliated with Softbank. This strong backing makes CEZEX one of the more renowned exchange players in the region."

"The success of this launch, will advance Asia's blockchain and crypto sector and attract more companies and start-ups to follow suit. We want to expand our portfolio of cutting-edge innovative companies and realise the collective mission of CEZA, CVA and ABACA to attract blockchain and fintech companies to bolster Philippines' position as a global fintech and blockchain hub", he added.

"We are impressed with the technical capability of the CEZEX Group and heartily congratulate them on being the first to be fully integrated in the pioneering Government Regulated Audit Platform For Crypto and Fintech Industries. We welcome their recognition of CEZA and the Philippines as a progressive jurisdiction for Fintech industries and the greater benefit for Asia of Financial Inclusion. We eagerly await their official Launch and the realization of the strong legal basis the Cagayan Economic Zone provides for its investors" said Mr Mel Songco, Chief Operating Officer of Y-Fi Business Solutions.

CEZEX will collaborate with a maximum of four sponsors/nominated advisors supported by CEZA to introduce and list security tokens and digital assets. Inbase Partners Limited, one of the sponsors/nominated advisors, are in position to work on the initial listing of products on the platform.

Mr Stephen Lynch, Inbase Partners' Managing Partner, said "The blockchain smart contract model will revolutionise both corporate finance and the financial services industry as it will bring advantages such as asset interoperability, with different types of assets represented by the same medium in the form of security tokens, which are traded on the same platform as well as automated compliance and rapid settlement, fractional ownership, round-the-clock trading and increased liquidity. "

He added, "Previously traditionally illiquid assets classes such as real estate, fine art, and early stage venture capital equity may now be tokenised and even further fractionalised to access earlier liquidity events".

Jack Ser, CEO of CEZEX, said, "CEZEX functions in the same manner as a traditional exchange, where sponsors introduce listings, broker/dealers introduce customers, market makers and custodians support the activities of the exchange. CEZEX has built an ecosystem with a broker/dealer network throughout the Asian region and is expanding to enable fully regulated and compliant trading. "

He added, "CEZEX adheres to the highest levels of KYC and AML compliance in a fully regulated environment to be able to offer digital asset trading for currencies (fiat/ cryptocurrency), security tokens and a very unique derivatives product."

Key players, including public bodies, need to take a proactive approach and lead the way in adopting a responsible behaviour to tackle cybersecurity challenges, says the Kosciuszko Institute in the CYBERSEC 2018 recommendations. The publication shows the results of the two-day debates, engaging more than 150 world-renowned experts and decision-makers during the 4^thEuropean Cybersecurity Forum – CYBERSEC 2018 – one of the biggest European conferences providing comprehensive overview of the strategic aspects of cybersecurity. The Forum was held under the theme “The Quest for Cyber Trust” and its discussions were divided into four thematic streams: State, Defence, Future, and Business.

 - Our distinguished speakers spoke with one voice – we need trust, we need tools to provide it and we need to be agile and less hesitant to act – says Joanna Świątkowska, PhD, CYBERSEC Programme Director and adds, that the set of recommendations are aimed for decision-makers and cybersecurity stakeholders to take bold measures to ensure safe cyberspace.

1. Cybersecurity can and must be strengthened through public procurements

Countries should include security criteria in procurements for the basic IT infrastructure, and price should not be a decisive factor. Secure public procurements should carefully look at action plans, targets, specific procurements criteria, and specific certifications, to really help national procurement bodies tackle existing challenges. It is strongly recommended that public sector and public procurement bodies talk more to their IT security agencies and implement cybersecurity strategies through public procurements.

There is an important piece of legislation – the EU public procurement directive– that is going to be reviewed. Taking an example from the chapter called “green public procurements” for instance, which sets out a requirement to procure in an “environmentally friendly way”, a chapter called “secure public procurements” should be included.

  2. Three Seas countries should prepare specific investment plans and raise funds to implement projects in the digital pillar. Cybersecurity should be the cornerstone of every activity

Three Seas countries should jointly apply for and then make use of the financial resources available in the new EU Multiannual Financial Framework to implement projects in the digital pillar. The priority project in this area should be the 3 Seas Digital Highway initiated by the Kosciuszko Institute and think tanks from the CEE. Possible funding sources are the Connecting Europe Facility and the Digital Europe Programme as well as national resources and Three Seas Fund. In the near future, efforts should be undertaken to prepare specific investment plans. 

 - If we want to execute the 3 Seas Digital Highway project, we would need each state to give incentive to their telecom companies to work, build interconnection and invest together. – says CEO of Exatel, Nikodem Bończa Tomaszewski during the CYBERSEC interview. - The Three Seas countries should think about investing in common fiber-optic infrastructure built along the highways. This infrastructure could be available in the whole sale model for everybody who would be interested. It would give a strong incentive for the whole economy – not only digital economy but also for the traditional industry to stimulate integration across the region. – claims Exatel’s CEO.

Cybersecurity as well as “security by design approach”have to be the cornerstone of each and every activity and projects in each of Three Seas Initiative’s pillars: energy, transportation and digital. The “do-things-fast-and-fix-them-later” way of thinking has to be abandoned, especially since digital solutions are today the foundation of critical processes which the socio-economic security depends on.

- The Three Seas Initiative, with the potential to create a strong backbone of digital connectivity is incredibly important. – underlines John Frank, Vice President, EU Government Affairs at Microsoft. - Without connectivity, local economies can’t grow, prosper, and take advantage of the incredible opportunities that are being made available through today’s technological advances. There is never been a better time to jump into technology. 

 3. 5G development must be indispensably correlated with security activities

While developing 5G it is recommended to keep in mind that customer-oriented needs cannot undermine the security aspects – security and functionality need to be advancing in parallel. Security responsibilities of the producers of devices connected to the network should be underlined. It is necessary to increase the users’ awareness. All users (private and public) should feel responsibility for their behaviour when it comes to cyber hygiene. 

- The user awareness is very important, but we have to remember, that the security of 5G will be in hands of those who own the infrastructure. – said Nikodem Bończa Tomaszewski, CEO of Exatel during the CYBERSEC 2018 discussion panel. - That’s why, in countries like Poland, the most important issue to resolve is: how are we going to build this infrastructure?

5G infrastructure operators and owners should build their business models on a public-private scheme that would increase trust and provide improved efficiency and security. Due to the 5G deployment infrastructure operators and owners will have the greatest impact on cybersecurity of the future,  therefore, the decision how and with whom to cooperate within the whole telecommunication value chain is absolutely crucial.

 4. States need to overcome the taboo, when it comes to the development of offensive capabilities

Regarding the usage of offensive tools for defensive purposes, more focus should be put on rules of engagement, political control, and legality. The nature of offensive cyber actions is unique and will require new areas of planning. Cyber actions are usually one-time use. This causes NATO member states to be reluctant to disclose their capabilities and methods. They will focus on providing effects rather than tools. This creates new needs for mechanisms of cooperation, especially in the multinational context.

- It’s important to reiterate, that whatever States will do, will stay within the framework of international law. International law applies to cyber. International law applies to offensive capabilities. No question, no doubt should be raised about that – underlined Ambassador Marina Kaljurand, Chair of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace and Former Estonian MFA during her keynote speech at CYBERSEC Forum 2018.

Usage of offensive capabilities requires close analysis of potential consequences and collateral damages, as well as proportionality. Their deployment must be seen from the broad perspective of all cross-domain tools.

 5. Securing the digital value chain should be embedded into the DNA of every activity in cyberspace

The concept of the security of the digital value chain is central to all activities in the area of cybersecurity. Explained by Edna Conway, CSO, Global Value Chain at Cisco Systems, “the value chain, certainly for the information and communications technology, is the end-to-end lifecycle of any solution, whether it’s software, or service, or hardware.” In the interconnected world, we are entirely interdependent. The critical issue is to identify third parties upon which we rely and to implement effective security requirements. While thinking about cybersecurity, we need to look at the full spectrum: physical security, logical security, operational security, behavioural security, information security and security of technologies.

Private-public cooperation is the key.We need to identify fundamental security requirements based on international solutions. We should think globally – not about regional or even country-specific solutions.

6. EU and NATO Member States should be more decisive in terms of cyber attribution

Attribution should be treated not only as a technical challenge, but also as a political one, which requires more cross-domain approach. 

- Attribution is something we’re doing increasingly – says Ciaran Martin, CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre in UK in the CYBERSEC TV Interview. Martin explains, that it’s all about getting the evidence and finding ways to make it transparent, so it is possible to convince people who’s behind certain cyberattacks. - Attribution gives us information that we can give to our companies, our governmental organisations and the citizens. We can provide them with tools to protect themselves from future attacks. – adds NCSC’s CEO.

Experts during CYBERSEC 2018 also recommended to develop the EU Cyber Diplomacy Toolbox, which is a framework for a joint EU diplomatic response to malicious cyber activities. One potential dimension for further action is to enhance community building, boost cooperation among entities that may contribute to attribution, including the private sector and non-EU states.

7. We need to change the approach towards cybersecurity from passive to active

We should take steps, even small, which will increase cybersecurity posture within organisations. The UK government created the “Active Defence” frameworkcomposed of a set of automated and free-to-implement measures which help a user to eliminate numerous cyber risks. Similar activities could be introduced around the world. 

- Active Defence is about doing something, it’s about not being passive, not being inactive. – explains the NCSC’s chief Ciaran Martin. It’s about fixing the technology, fixing the way data flows, stopping spoofing, about taking down bad websites, just to protect people automatically. – adds Martin.

8. Start looking at the labour market as a whole to safeguard the cybersecurity ecosystem

Secure development and maintenance are the launching pad for the vulnerability prevention and the safeguarding of the ecosystem. We need to have more secure coders and we need to start looking at the labour market as a whole.

- The cybersecurity ecosystem consists of not just security researchers, but also bug fixers, and the folks who prevent the security incidents from happening and who write more secure code. – says Katie Moussouris, Founder & CEO, Luta Security and a famous hacker and a pioneer of the bug bounty. - So in order to ensure a global ecosystem, that is more secure, we need all players in this ecosystem, including security researchers to be welcome. But not just to prevent security holes, but also find them and fix them, when they are missed in the initial process. – adds Moussouris.

9. Keep the future developments in mind when planning the methods of protecting your data 

Entities must keep in mind that the encrypted data they store today might become readable in the foreseeable future due to the quantum developments. There is no time like the present to begin to think about the various methods of protecting data against potential decrypting operations in the future.

Europe must speed up in building its own quantum machines. Also, apart from quantum hardware, there is a need to develop quantum software. The European crypto policy should be created and implemented.

There are two areas we need to focus on:

• A lack of the proof of trust– how to update older devices and older encryption methods in order to protect users.
• Setting standardsfor crypto agility within organisations.

10. Highly reliable cloud solutions can significantly increase trust and security, while saving budget on cybersecurity specialists

Implementation of many modern technologies, like cloud computing, requires trust. Trust is built on transparency of technology and verification of security and privacy (using, among others, certifications or standards). The mechanisms of building confidence in digital technologies should be employed and promoted throughout the region.

- Trust is critical to everything that we're doing. We’re moving to the cloud computing age, when perhaps the idea of moving data to the third party servers might create questions about how these large data centres are protecting our data. – said Pablo Chavez, VP, Global Public Policy and Government Relations at Google Cloud during CYBERSEC 2018. – We have the opportunity to demonstrate to our customers, that the data in the cloud is actually very secure, that it is under their control.

Many companies cannot afford to hire employees with high cybersecurity expertise. Cloud providers are capable of providing clients with secure solutions regarding data management. The cloud often brings a better level of resilience. For instance: denial-of-service attacks succeed rather poorly in cloud environment compared to an enterprise environment. It also enables quicker patching conducted on the core infrastructure.

European cloud security certification scheme,which will be built on existing solutions and which will define common technical controls for cloud security at the European level, can significantly increase trust and transparency. Security can be sector-oriented and in the future we should move towards sectoral guidelines and requirements for cloud services.

We predict that 2019 will be characterized by more complex and deceptive cybersecurity incidents and attacks. We will not win the competition with black hats unless we concentrate efforts of governments and companies on Securing the World’s Digital DNA – says Izabela Albrycht announcing a motto of the 5th anniversary edition of CYBERSEC Forum 2019 that takes place on 29-30 October 2019.