Transitioning from sovereignty to security, the program for the first day, SECURITY DAY, reflects the dynamic evolution of threats in 2026.

Throughout both days, the EXPO ZONE will feature interactive demonstrations of the latest innovations and MASTERCLASSES focused on practical skill-building in security and artificial intelligence.

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How can Europe reduce its digital dependence and regain its technological strength, if not dominance? Europe need not be condemned to the role of a passive user of technology, but can become a “second mover” if it can leverage its infrastructure, data, market, regulation, and its own industrial capabilities. However, there are many precedents for such situations.

The future of AI will no longer be determined solely by laboratories and companies, but also by those who control the infrastructure, data, and rules. Europe has a great deal at stake: its sovereignty, security, and ability to remain a relevant power in the digital age.

Growing regulatory requirements are placing increasing demands on organizations, many of which lack sufficient financial and human resources. According to surveys, only a small fraction of organizations consider their preparedness for new obligations to be adequate, with regulations becoming a significant source of pressure on IT and security management. This session will focus on identifying the minimum viable measures needed to meet legislative requirements and practical approaches to effective implementation—even within a limited budget. It will present risk prioritization and pragmatic strategies for leveraging existing resources.

The best defense does not begin at the moment of impact, but long before it. This panel will demonstrate how people, technology, processes, and monitoring converge to build true organizational resilience - the capacity to preempt attacks, detect them in their early stages, mitigate their impact, and restore operations without collapse.
 

In modern manufacturing, attacks are no longer confined to computers. They target the very continuity of operations. Every new integration, remote access point, or IT/OT convergence enhances performance - yet simultaneously increases the risk of production halts, supply chain disruptions, or extortion schemes where companies are forced to pay for their own operations. This panel will demonstrate where modernization ends and vulnerability begins.

AI agents are emerging as a new class of "digital workers"—tireless, scalable, and increasingly empowered to act without direct human intervention. However, this very autonomy fundamentally reshapes organizational security models and introduces entirely new classes of risk. Beyond legitimate use, agentic AI is becoming a potent tool for adversaries, enabling the automation of reconnaissance, social engineering, attack generation, and the bypassing of security mechanisms at unprecedented scale and speed. A featured case study will demonstrate how a beneficial tool can transform into an active threat vector the moment autonomy outpaces control mechanisms. This session will focus on emerging threats associated with AI agent deployment, their exploitation in offensive scenarios, and strategies for managing these risks—from permission mapping and oversight to implementing security frameworks for agentic systems.

PARTNER OF THE PANEL IS COMPANY CHECKPOINT

The year 2026 marks a pivotal milestone in the field of cybersecurity. Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is progressively moving from academic theory into practical application, as the anticipated arrival of quantum computers (the so-called "Q-Day") pressures organizations to protect sensitive data well in advance. This session will focus on the practical implications of this transformation—specifically the need for crypto-agility: the ability of organizations to flexibly change and update cryptographic mechanisms without major disruptions to their infrastructure. It will present the current state of standardization, migration strategies to PQC, and demonstrate why preparedness for these changes is becoming not only a security necessity but also a significant competitive advantage.

Today, a cyber incident in the public sector is no longer merely a technical problem or an IT system outage. It can paralyze public services, disrupt financial processes, compromise citizens’ sensitive data, and undermine trust in government. The resilience of digital services is therefore becoming one of the key issues in both security and governance.The discussion will explore how individual ministries are building the capacity to prevent incidents, monitor threats, and ensure operational continuity for systems the state cannot afford to lose. What experience do they have in building security oversight, response capabilities, and BCP/DRP frameworks? The panel will also address inter-ministerial cooperation, incident response coordination, and the state’s preparedness for situations in which the failure of digital services could have an immediate impact on the functioning of the country.

Throughout the Spring ITAPA 2026 event, we invite you to visit the EXPO zone, where you’ll find interactive exhibits.

See the list of exhibitors