In her intervention, Cecilia Popa drew on both the EU CyberNet’s expertise in cybersecurity capacity building (CCB) and the insights of its Expert Pool members. She explained why dependencies matter, why artificial intelligence (AI) attack surface is different, how to think about supplier assurance and a five-step sequence that ends in practical partnership. 

Using port security as an example, Cecilia Popa explained how port is not an isolated entity, because it sits in an ecosystem of public authorities, terminal operators, shipping companies and technology providers: when one link in the chain fails, the effect travels across the chain. The message to the audience was clear: not being attacked does not mean not being affected and we cannot protect what we do not know. Public-private cooperation, information sharing and coordination during incidents are what turn that understanding into resilience, especially as digitalisation and AI deepen these dependencies. 

Cecilia Popa additionally highlighted the increasing role of artificial intelligence in third parties services and linked threats such as opaque model weights, poisoned training data, dynamic API pipelines and hidden concentration. This brings to the core questions of trust, dependency and what happens if relationships change.  

The session closed with an explanation of five-step sequence for organisations: visibility (what do we depend on?), assurance (why do we still trust it?), authority (who can act when trust is gone?), systemic risk (where does dependency become concentration?) and continuity (what if reliance has to stop?) 

Finally, Cecilia Popa concluded that cooperation between different parties cannot begin when cyber incident occurs, but it must be established well in advance. 

EU CyberNet extends its appreciation to the Administration for Cyber Security within the Ministry of Digital Affairs in Taiwan for the kind invitation and to the Expert Pool members who contributed with insights for this session: Lisbeth Laurie, Andra T. Alcala, Omar Ramadam and Cosmin Marin. 

Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/eucybernet/albums/72177720336704360