It is hard today to imagine any business without IT. But how do we keep the systems and information safe and protected? How do you ensure satisfactory IT-security when outsourcing?

These and other questions were discussed today at the Breakfast seminar about cybersecurity organized by The Norwegian Business and Industry Security Council (NSR), The Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO) and the Norwegian-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce (NUCC).

To help us answer the questions we had a very experienced and competent panel with Alexander Bornyakov, Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation from Ukraine, as well as Hanne Tangen Nilsen, CSO in Telenor – Norway’s largest telecommunication company, and Arne Mjøs, CEO in Itera – a Norwegian design and technology company with IT-office in Ukraine. The panel discussion was moderated by Per Thorsheim, CSO in Nordic Choice Hotels.

Ukraine is currently going through digital transformation aiming among others on 100% availability of public services to citizens and businesses, as well as doubling the share of IT in Ukraine’s GDP, according to Deputy Minister Bornyakov. With over 200 000 specialists, Ukraine currently has already one of the largest pools of IT-specialists in Europe. The government’s ambition is to double that number.

Norway, for its part, is challenged by a lack of IT-capacity, which is a huge barrier for the future digitalization of the country. To meet the demand for IT-services, Norwegian businesses need to utilize IT-competence in other countries. Ukraine can be a good partner. For NUCC it is important to provide knowledge about the risks and how companies can tackle these. As Odin Johannesen, director of NSR, mentioned in his opening, you must be aware of the risks in order to trust your partner.

The panelist got the question of what would be their top advice on how to tackle cybersecurity risk when outsourcing. According to Hanne Tangen Nilsen, you need to know the value of your assets, the threat picture and regulations you need to comply with, you should make sure to put into the contract that you have arenas to discuss security.

Arne Mjøs’s advice is to visit Ukraine and make sure that you know the whole value chain of the contractor and potential sub-contractors. Deputy Minister Bornyakov supported Mjøs’s advice and added that when outsourcing you should do it step-by-step.

We would like to thank our partners from NSR and NHO for cooperation on the event and bringing up such an important topic. We would also like to thank everyone who joined us at the seminar, we hope to see you at our future events! Please check our calendar here.