CyberSweden 2026

The landscape of cybersecurity has undergone significant changes in the past decade, with its coverage expanding from “cyber-only” systems such as compute job execution, web services, and mobile apps, to “cyber-physical” systems such as smart grids, autonomous vehicles, and manufacturing systems. Today, any system with a cyber component faces threats from cyber attacks, calling for new security approaches and solutions to secure not just the cyber components (i.e., computers and networks), but the overall cyber-physical systems (CPS). I will discuss new challenges in cyber-physical security that did not exist in traditional computer security, as well as opportunities to secure CPS via an inter-disciplinary cross-plane (cyber and physical) methodology. I will also report our ongoing efforts in CPS vulnerability discovery and confirmation, as concrete instantiation of the cross-plane methodology.

Dongyan Xu is the Samuel Conte Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) at Purdue University. His current research interests include computer systems security and cyber-physical security, especially in the domains of autonomous vehicles, industrial control systems, and supply chain networks. He has received multiple awards from major cybersecurity conferences for his research papers on kernel malware defense, memory forensics, advanced persistent threat (APT) analytics, and IoT/CPS vulnerability mitigation. He is an AAAS Fellow.

The accelerating sophistication of AI-driven cyberattacks, rising zero-day vulnerabilities, and the explosive growth of connected IoT devices are fundamentally reshaping the threat landscape. No organization — regardless of size or sector — is immune. Traditional security architectures built on the public Internet are proving structurally inadequate against today’s attacks.SCION (Scalability, Control, and Isolation On Next-generation networks), developed at ETH Zurich and among others commercialized by Anapaya Systems, offers a paradigm shift: network-level security that isolates critical infrastructure from the public Internet entirely. By cryptographically locking traffic paths and rendering services invisible to unauthorized actors, SCION delivers business continuity, end-to-end security, and unprecedented control.Already widely adopted across Swiss finance, healthcare, energy, and government sectors, SCION is proving that becoming Internet-free is not only technical and operational possible  — it is measurably effective.

Martin Bosshardt is CEO of Anapaya Systems AG, the Zürich-based company commercializing SCION technology. He brings over 20 years of leadership and entrepreneurial experience in network security and SD-WAN to the role. Previously, he served as CEO of Open Systems AG, a leading SD-WAN provider operating across more than 180 countries. He sits on the board of Ontinue AG a leading AI driven MDR company owned by the private equity firm EQT.  He is a recipient of the SVC Entrepreneurs Award, serves on the Advisory Board of PwC Switzerland, and holds a degree in electrical engineering from ETH Zürich.

ATHENE (the National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity) is Europe’s largest cybersecurity research center, uniting over 700 researchers from Fraunhofer institutes, TU Darmstadt, Hochschule Darmstadt, and Goethe University Frankfurt. Its research focuses on two strategic priorities: strengthening Europe’s digital sovereignty through security research and advancing the interaction of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity to address emerging threats and opportunities.

Dr. Michael Kreutzer serves as COO of ATHENE and is responsible for internationalization and strategic industry relations at Fraunhofer SIT. His expertise spans digital sovereignty, cybersecurity governance, crypto-agility and Zero Trust architectures, and he actively advises cybersecurity startups through the ATHENE Digital Hub.