CyberSQUAD The Hague 2025

Marc Simons is a self-employed electronics engineer in Eindhoven (Netherlands). After studying electronics at the Polytechnic University of Eindhoven, he worked for several companies in the field of surveillance and security, before founding his own company at the beginning of the century, in January 2000. He has since specialised in the development of analog electronics and embedded platforms and sensors for agricultural applications.

In 2003 he co-founded the virtual Crypto Museum, which has since received international recognition. Crypto Museum has a physical collection of historical cipher machines and equipment for espionage, that is available on-line through its website. It is the goal to analyse, describe and restore as much of the equipment as possible, and share this information with the public.

Paul Reuvers is a self-employed electronics engineer in Eindhoven (Netherlands). After studying electronics at the Polytechnic University of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, he worked for several companies in the field radio, television and broadcasting, before founding his own company in 1986. He has since specialised in the development of embedded software for a variety of applications, including agricultural platforms and sensors.

In 2003 he co-founded the virtual Crypto Museum, which has since received international recognition. Crypto Museum has a physical collection of historical cipher machines and equipment for espionage, that is available on-line through its website. It is the goal to analyse, describe and restore as much of the equipment as possible, and share this information with the public.

Aart Jochem was appointed CISO for the Central Government at the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations in 2020. He chairs the interdepartmental CISO council, is responsible for government-wide policy and frameworks, and coordinates the joint efforts in the field of digital resilience and privacy within the central government.

Aart was previously CISO at a pension fund provider. Prior to that, he worked as a member of the management team and head of Monitoring and Response at the National Cyber Security Center of the Ministry of Security and Justice, as a managing consultant at Capgemini, and as an innovation manager at Rijkswaterstaat (the Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management).

Aart Jochem studied Computer Architecture and Digital Technologies at Delft University of Technology.

At the city of peace & justice, cyber- and information security is very important to keep the information and citizens of The Hague safe. My role as CISO is to work towards a high resilient organization against digital attacks, with an effective information security management system.

Matt Psencik started out his career by taking his lifelong passion for tech and putting it to use working for multiple organizations as a Security Analyst and Security Engineer before specializing in Endpoint Detection and Response software and helping found an EDR Services branch of an MSSP. During that role he architected and maintained large scale EDR deployments, developed detections, and provided professional services to large Fortune 100 companies.

Following that Matt joined Tanium under the professional services department before shifting into their Endpoint Security Specialist team helping enable and elevate Tanium vast customer base. Today Matt is a Director of Security Product Research and Design helping plan and drive Tanium’s security portfolio to best protect its customers in the ever-evolving threat landscape we live in.

Abstract:
Security of Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and critical infrastructure is difficult enough in normal times—and becomes exceptionally challenging amid rising geopolitical tensions. This presentation explores the fundamental differences between traditional IT security and the specialized security needs of control systems found in modern critical infrastructure, such as the electricity grid, water treatment facilities, and transportation networks.

We will delve into how ICS environments centres around the process properties rather than the CIA model  in classical IT security, and why security solutions designed for IT often fail—or even cause harm—when applied to operational technology (OT) systems. This will cover unique ICS constraints , such as legacy hardware, real-time operations,  limited patching abilities, and unique supply-chain issues.

The talk will also examine recent real-world cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, highlight how geopolitical actors are leveraging cyber capabilities in asymmetric warfare, and offer ways forward on building resilience.

Dr.  Kursawe earned his PhD in 2001 from the University of Saarbrücken in collaboration with IBM Research Zurich, working on securely distributing services over unreliable networks. Following his doctorate, and before that topic became popular thanks to Bitcoin, he continued at IBM until 2003 with a focus on Trusted Computing, and later held positions at Philips, KU Leuven, and Radboud University as well as several Startups, where he further honed applied security research.

As co-founder and Chief Scientist of the European Network for Cyber Security (ENCS), Dr. Kursawe helped shape cybersecurity strategies for grid operators and national authorities across Europe, occasionally convincing engineers and policy-makers to agree on the same definition of “secure.” He has served on multiple international expert groups and contributed to research projects aimed at keeping the lights on and the turbines spinning.

More recently, he joined DNV, working primarily on training for the energy and industrial sectors, now also working on new challenges such as the energy transition and the impact of geopolitical events  on the security of critical infrastructures.

In this keynote, we will share our experiences surrounding a unique situation in which we, as ESET Netherlands, played a crucial role in a national, public-private coordination effort. During the NATO summit in the Netherlands, we collaborated with the NCSC and other parties on real-time monitoring, joint threat detection, and public communication—from a temporary “War Room” setting.
The presentation demonstrates how collaboration under pressure works in practice, with concrete examples such as Operation Endgame and Project Melissa.

The key points of the session are:
• What the NATO summit meant for the digital threat landscape in the Netherlands
• How ESET contributed to coordinated national defense, beyond its commercial role
• Lessons learned & opportunities to scale this model across Europe

Michiel Oosterwijk has been working in various roles at the NCSC since 2014. In recent years, he led the Incident Response team and later the Fusion Centre. Recently, he has been primarily focusing on training and developing cyber talent in the Netherlands. Since 2019, he has been organizing the Challenge the Cyber CTF and the Cyberbootcamp for young people.

Rik van der Brugge is a consultant at Cinq ICT and a Cribl Certified Consultant, focused on solving data-related challenges through smart observability and efficient data pipelines.

Bouke Nijhuis is the CTO at CINQ ICT. He likes to learn new things and he loves to live code on the stage. Furthermore he is an international speaker and a committer of open source projects

Lead Security Analyst at ESET