WEBVTT

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I think if you go through
industry by industry,

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there's a lot of these dependencies

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that are not fully realized.

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Maikel, welcome.

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Maikel, how dependent has Europe become

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on digital infrastructure?

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Well, I think it's much more pervasive

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than many people realize.

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For instance, restocking supermarkets.

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They order for the next day, every day.

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If there's an outage, that can't be done,

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and you're going to see
empty shelves pretty quickly.

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But also in hospitals.

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All of the consultations,
operations, rely on patient data

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that can't be accessed, so
what are you going to do?

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So you're going to have

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to cancel many of those.

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So I think if you go through
industry by industry,

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there's a lot of these dependencies

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that are not fully realized.

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Where are the biggest
vulnerabilities then?

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Well, if you look at it from
a telco landscape domain,

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I think there's a couple.

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One is in the physical infrastructure,

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the submarine cables, landing stations.

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Obviously, they've been in focus a lot.

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And major outages there are possible

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and would have widespread impact.

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And the other one is in the systems and IT

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that actually make the network run.

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And there's two sources of that.

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One is human mistake.

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A wrong configuration can bring down

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an entire network quite easily.

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Or a cyber event that could
also have a similar impact.

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Or a cyber event that could
also have a similar impact.

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So if you don't mind,

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what steps need to be taken to ensure

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that those risks are mitigated?

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I think there's a couple.

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One, European Union, I think quite wisely,

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released funds to ensure

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that we have more physical redundancy,

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which, particularly in the edges of Europe

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where there's a lot of small countries

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that aren't easily connected,
to get more resilience

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in the infrastructure is very expensive,

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and the telco operators will
need that kind of funding.

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So using that in the right way

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and wisely is going to be very important.

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I think the second key thing

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that I'd say is the vertical industry

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that are using the connectivity
combined with the telcos

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and the governments to ensure
that they work together

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on being better prepared,
putting the resilience in place,

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and also practicing what happens

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and how do you respond if
something were to occur.

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Maikel, thank you so much.