It’s time for the Cybersecurity Week in Brussels!!! Today we are kicking off the “Advanced Cybersecurity and Global Cybersecurity Strategy” course within the Advanced Master in Privacy, Cybersecurity, Data Management and Leadership LLM at the European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity (ECPC)!

This week we are at ECPC’s Brussels Campus for the “Brussels experience week – Cybersecurity” where just few hours ago, I presented a wide selection of “case law” (decisions of European Supervisory Authorities) regarding data security violations. More specifically, I provided our students with an extensive analysis of decisions concerning violations of Arts. 5(1)(f), 32, 33, and 34 GDPR.

My lecture therefore illustrated the many ways in which Supervisory Authorities have interpreted the security-related provisions of the GDPR. Indeed, by understanding the ratio of such decisions, it is possible to learn important lessons which can then contribute to improving the data security compliance posture of organisations.

We are now in the middle of the lecture of a special guest speaker, Mr. Desmond de Haan, Head of the Security & Technology Department of the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens) who is discussing data security compliance based on his first-hand experience at the Authority, with a lecture entitled “Cybersecurity and the GDPR: Lessons learned from 100.000 Data Breach Notifications”. The tutorial activity for this week (part of our problem-based learning approach in the LLM) will consist of an interactive discussion with Mr. de Haan – which is definitely already happening!!!

It’s great to be back to in-person teaching and I’m very much looking forward to this intensive week with our LLM students, EUROPOL (where we are going to go tomorrow), our knowledgeable colleagues, and more guest speakers on Thursday!