Note: the video focus slipped during this live recording at the booth. The conversation is the point, and the audio version is unaffected. Recorded at the Atos booth, CybersecNL 2026, minutes after Martin's main stage talk. Martin de Vries has worked in security across three sectors: banking, higher education and industry. He was CISO at a Dutch university when it was hit by a cyberattack, and now works in the industrial sector. Hosted by Menno van der Horst with Quint Ketting. ## Timestamps 00:00 Straight from the main stage 00:50 Three sectors: banking, higher education, industry 01:41 What changes when you move sectors: culture 02:26 What doesn't: listening, relationships, threats and risks 02:50 From highly regulated to compliance as an afterthought 03:20 The CISO as facilitator 04:20 "I own the process, not the risk" 05:28 Why "I told you so" isn't the answer 05:49 Accepting risk at the right level 06:24 Acquisitions, due diligence and security 07:28 The shelved report, and the ransomware that followed 09:42 You don't spend a million to avoid 1.2 10:12 The cyberattack on the university 12:18 A Signal message on a Saturday evening 13:19 Deciding near midnight without the business present 13:43 Having the mandate versus taking it 15:00 IT back online within a week 15:41 Postponing an entire exam week 17:13 Research grant deadlines and month-end salaries 18:20 Disconnecting the network, and session tokens expiring 19:01 Restoring, and in which order to reconnect 19:39 Taking care of your teams 21:59 Sending a whole team home for twelve hours 22:21 Quint: Slammer, and sleeping at the office at twenty 23:08 Room for the personal during a crisis 25:07 Sunday 9 a.m.: what do we share? 25:44 At a university, internal communication is public 26:17 One update per day, at a fixed time 28:32 Openness as part of the culture 29:44 Closing: talk to your counterparts in other sectors ## Key takeaways - Moving sectors changes the culture and maturity you work in. Threats, risks, measures and the need to listen stay the same. - The CISO owns the risk process, not the risk. The job is to find the risk owner and make sure the risk is understood and accepted at the right level. - After an incident, fix first. Then revisit the trade-off between impact and the cost of prevention. - Write down the mandate to disconnect, and make sure the rest of the organisation knows it exists. - Technical recovery within a week came from years of investing in processes. The business impact, from exams to grants to payroll, ran much longer. - Look after your people. Rotate shifts, and when needed send a whole team home. - Communicate once a day at a fixed time, identically internally and externally. It prevents everyone from refreshing for news. - Share what happened, so others don't make the same mistakes. ## Mentioned Fox-IT, which presented the incident analysis Maastricht University, which shared openly after its 2019 ransomware attack ## The full series Ramsés Gallego, Kelvin Rorive, Marianne Schinkel, Aernout Reijmer, Mandy Andress, Gilad Friedman and Martin de Vries. --- SecurityCafe. Powered by Atos.