10 Years international Town Hall Meeting@it-sa: Why cybersecurity needs more collaboration

Opening and keynote: Collaboration as the key to success

Peter Möhring, Managing Director of Security Network Munich, and Ulrike Hoffmann, Executive Director of Invest in Bavaria, opened the event and emphasized the importance of the Town Hall Meeting as a platform for exchange between business, politics, and science. BSI President Claudia Plattner then took the floor and set a remarkable tone with her keynote: Collaboration, not regulation, drives progress in Germany’s cybersecurity landscape.

Plattner presented impressive examples of successful voluntary initiatives. Over 150 organizations have already independently improved their email security through more secure protocols – evidence that the community is ready to take responsibility. The upcoming BSI portal aims to further simplify communication for frameworks such as NIS2 and the Cyber Resilience Act, thereby elevating cooperation between authorities and business to a new level.

Plattner’s introduction of a new threat dimension was particularly striking: Alongside the well-known categories of Cyber Crime and Cyber Conflict, she identified “Cyber Dominance” as an emerging threat – a clear sign of how dynamic and multifaceted the threat landscape is evolving. At the same time, the BSI President announced concrete support measures for businesses: The updated C5 cloud security framework is open for comments, and BSI security requirements (Grundschutz) have been digitized and published on GitHub in machine-readable format to enable automation and the use of modern tools.

CISO panel: Three uncomfortable truths

Following Claudia Plattner’s keynote address, the high-profile panel took over. Under the provocative title “What keeps you awake at night?” Marco Eggerling, Maximilian Heinemeyer, Michael Nowak, and Paul Moskovich discussed the most pressing challenges facing the industry. The panel was moderated by Kai Hermsen, Program Director of Security Network Munich, and brought three uncomfortable truths to light.

Complexity is exploding: Artificial intelligence, new regulatory requirements, and rapidly evolving threat landscapes are converging simultaneously, creating a situation that is barely manageable even for experts. While discussions about the implications of the EU AI Act are still ongoing, new attack vectors through generative AI are already emerging. The panelists agreed: The speed of change is overwhelming many organizations.

Even experts are losing track: The cybersecurity industry is increasingly overloading itself with solutions, tools, and frameworks. If even Chief Information Security Officers can no longer keep up, how are normal companies without dedicated security teams supposed to manage? This question hung in the air and found no easy answer. The discussion made it clear that the industry urgently needs to work on simplification and consolidation.

SMEs are left behind: 98 percent of the German economy consists of small and medium-sized enterprises – yet there are hardly any practical cybersecurity solutions for them. While corporations can build entire compliance teams and invest in highly complex security infrastructures, SMEs often still struggle with the absolute basics. The discussion about highly complex enterprise solutions all too often forgets the reality of German SMEs – and this is precisely where one of the greatest challenges for the coming years lies.

Recommendations for action and outlook

Concrete recommendations for action emerged from the Town Hall Meeting discussions. Companies should focus on pragmatic solutions instead of perfection, utilize voluntary cooperations and industry initiatives, and invest in solid fundamentals before implementing complex systems. The industry itself has a responsibility to develop SME-suitable cybersecurity solutions, promote transparency and knowledge exchange, and create more visibility for cybersecurity experts. Politics, in turn, can make an important contribution by supporting collaborative approaches, simplifying compliance processes, and strengthening the digitization of security standards.

Conclusion: Many challenges, but an active community working together on solutions

The 10th IT-SA Town Hall Meeting made it clear: Cybersecurity will only be successful if pragmatic solutions are developed for the broad masses. Not everyone can afford a Security Operations Center, but everyone deserves protection. The event impressively demonstrated that the German cybersecurity community is ready to work together on solutions – across company boundaries, industries, and hierarchies. Collaboration, the central message, is key to protecting our digital future.