Events

The eighth Western Balkans Digital Summit took place on 13 and 14 October, organised by Montenegro’s Ministry of Public Administration with the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) and the European Union. It was part of Montenegro’s 2026 chairmanship of the #BerlinProcess, and the Leaders’ Summit follows on 22 October. More than 150 people from the region’s governments, EU institutions, industry and civil society attended.
Our Programme Director, Gilles Schwoerer, moderated the panel on “Cybersecurity & Building a Secure Digital Environment”. He led a discussion with people who deal with these issues every day:
 ◽ Samir Orahovac, former Acting Director, Agencija za sajber bezbjednost Crne Gore / Cybersecurity Agency of Montenegro
◽Denisa Kurtagic, Programme Manager Cybersecurity, DCAF - Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance
◽Dusan Banovicć, Director, Service Development & Digital Transformation, Crnogorski Telekom
◽Vojtěch H. (Hons), EU Delegation, Sarajevo
 ◽Mladen Bukilic Bukilić, CISO/SOC Manager, Čikom

Having a regulator, a telecom operator, a SOC team, a donor and an EU delegation at one table is useful, because each of them sees a different part of the same weak spot. Digital identity, e-services and AI all rely on networks and institutions that can withstand an attack. 

The summit closed with a clear list of priorities for the region: mutual recognition of digital identities, digital identity wallets, more affordable roaming with the EU, improved connectivity and stronger cybersecurity cooperation. RCC Secretary General Amer Kapetanović said the task ahead is to connect the six economies, not only to digitalise them. It was a privilege for WB3C to moderate the cybersecurity discussion, and we look forward to the work that follows.

This week, we had the pleasure of welcoming a delegation of around 15 journalists from across the EU who came to Montenegro to better understand the hybrid threats the country is facing. The visit was supported by DG ENEST.
The group brought together reporters, editors and camera crews from L’Opinion and Le Nouvel Obs (France), Rai (Italy), Deutsche Welle (Germany), Deník N and TV Nova (Czechia), Kurier and Profil (Austria), and De Telegraaf (the Netherlands).
The programme included perspectives from two of Montenegro’s leading civil society voices invited by the EU Delegation in Montenegro, Zlatko Vujovic (CEMI) and Milica Kovačević (CDT), who shared their insights on how hybrid threats show up on the ground and what they mean for Montenegrin European perspective and upcoming general elections in 2027. 
On behalf of Western Balkans Cyber Capacity Centre (WB3C), Vanja Madzgalj MBE had the opportunity to show the journalists our facility and talk about our work, including our efforts on FIMI and disinformation. These are topics where good journalism and good cooperation matter a great deal. Our trainers for cybercrime Cyril CORRIAS and Jean-Pierre Bonnet (JP BNT) stirred particular interest in the work we do to support law enforcement and the judiciary in their fight against financial and crypto frauds, digital forensics, online and anti-drug investigations, cross-border trafficking, human smuggling, online sexual exploitation and much more. 

Thank you to our colleagues from DG ENEST, Jerneja Starič and Christina Moldt, and to Zeljka Lekic-Subasic from Ecorys for the smooth organisation. And thank you to all the journalists for your time, curiosity and the important work you do.
Hybrid threats don’t stop at borders, and neither should our conversations about them.

From 12 to 14 October, WB3C is in Herceg Novi with the Regional School of Public Administration (ReSPA) for an advanced Training of Trainers on Cyber Resilience and Data Protection. In the room are public administration professionals from across the Western Balkans, plus colleagues from Armenia, Moldova and Ukraine. The training runs alongside the Western Balkans Digital Summit, and participants are taking part in both.

Today, governments run more and more of their services on connected systems and data. When those systems fail, or when data is mishandled, citizens lose trust. Technology alone doesn’t solve the risks. You need people who know what to do, institutions that have thought it through in advance, and neighbours who share what they learn. That’s the thinking behind the three days.

✅ Day 1 is about preparedness: current cyber threats, governance, cyber hygiene, incident prevention and response, business continuity and crisis management, and the legal basis for data protection in the public sector.

✅ Day 2 gets practical on data protection. We’re working through GDPR principles, Records of Processing Activities, Data Protection Impact Assessments, transparency obligations and the rights of data subjects.

✅ Day 3 looks ahead: artificial intelligence, information sharing, cooperation between institutions, and how to train others well. Each participant leaves with an institutional action plan and a realistic way to pass this knowledge on at home.
Our experts Arianit Maraj and Stella Manga Chesnay are leading the sessions, drawing on their work in cybersecurity governance, institutional resilience and data protection.
The “training of trainers” format is deliberate. What happens in this room only counts if it travels, so we’re asking every participant to take it back to their own administration and share it with colleagues. The week is also a chance for Western Balkans and Eastern Partnership colleagues to compare notes on shared problems and find ways to keep working together.
Our Programme Director, Gilles Schwoerer, put it simply: “Cyber resilience is about more than technology. It requires skilled people, prepared institutions and strong regional cooperation.”
Thank you to our partners at ReSPA, and to Bojana Bajić for opening the event, and to everyone taking part this week.
 

The WB3C Programme Director participated in the conference organised by RACVIAC in Zagreb, entitled “Strengthening SEE Resilience in Cyber Security Against Hybrid Threats.” 
The mission provided an opportunity to present the Centre’s activities and discuss several potential areas of cybersecurity cooperation.

The areas under consideration include strengthening the cyber resilience of critical entities in the Western Balkans through NIS2 training and technical training aimed at addressing the skills gap in operational technology security, with priority given to young civilian and military talent. 

They also include training on artificial intelligence and the implications of the European Union’s AI Act, the development of new cybersecurity curricula with universities and military academies in the region, and the possibility of providing cybersecurity training to military units in cooperation with RACVIAC.

This week, WB3C hosted an Advanced Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) training in Podgorica, delivered by Ljuban Petrovic for SOC, CSIRT, CERT and IT professionals from critical entities across the Western Balkans. 
Building on the foundational CTI course delivered earlier this year, the four-day programme goes further into advanced threat hunting, Threat Intelligence Platforms and automation, threat actor profiling and attribution, the MITRE ATT&CK framework, strategic reporting and hands-on work with MISP. 
The aim is to help practitioners move from collecting technical threat data to producing actionable intelligence that supports detection, incident response and decision-making, while strengthening information sharing between national and regional CERT/CSIRT structures.
We are especially pleased to see more women then men in this training, which encourages us that our region is slowly breaking cultural barriers and biases.

We were much honoured to host today at WB3C the Foreign Ministers of Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia, together with their delegations, following the Berlin Process Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Montenegro.
Beate Meinl-Reisinger, Federal Minister for European and International Affairs of Austria, Petr Macinka, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic and Juraj Blanár, Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of Slovakia were welcomed by Naim M. GJOKAJ, on behalf of the Government of Montenegro as one of WB3C’s founding partners, and Gilles Schwoerer, WB3C Programme Director. The visit was also attended by Minsiter Marash Dukaj and resident ambassadors of Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic in Montenegro.

Their visit gave us an important opportunity to show, first-hand, what WB3C has become and where it is heading.
After a tour of our facilities, we presented the Centre’s mission and work across cybersecurity, cybercrime, cyber diplomacy and hybrid threats, as well as the partnerships that make this regional model possible. Particular attention was given to our cooperation with the European Union, including the EU-supported regional programme, and to the growing network of European and international institutions contributing expertise to our activities.
What matters most is the purpose behind this work.
WB3C was created to give the Western Balkans a permanent facility where countries can build capability together: strengthening public institutions and critical entities, supporting law enforcement and the judiciary, developing the skills of the existing workforce and investing in the next generation through cooperation with universities.

Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic are closely engaged in the European integration of the Western Balkans, while the Berlin Process continues to place regional cooperation, security and the region’s European future at the centre of the agenda.
For WB3C, the longer-term direction is equally clear: a Centre increasingly shaped, supported and governed by the Western Balkans themselves, firmly connected to European institutions, standards and expertise.
We greatly appreciated the ministers’ interest in our work and the opportunity to present the role WB3C can play in making regional cooperation in cyber security practical, lasting and genuinely owned by the region.

This week marks the culmination of a long-term commitment at the WB3C (Western Balkan Cyber Capacity Centre). As part of the European project EU4FAST, led by CIVIPOL—the technical cooperation operator of the French Ministry of the Interior—a specialized cyber "train-the-trainer" course was successfully delivered.

This session represents the final step and the concrete realization of an intensive cycle of 5 cyber training modules conducted from March to September 2026.

Through this high-level program, 9 investigators and 1 justice advisor have successfully reached the finish line to earn their trainer credentials. They now hold the key skills to pass on this strategic knowledge, sustainably strengthening cyber resilience across the region.

Congratulations to the new graduates for their outstanding commitment, and a big thank you to the teams at CIVIPOL and WB3C for making this milestone project a success!

That question is at the heart of this week’s training at the WB3C, organised in cooperation with the Council of Europe and opened by H.E. Cécile Humbert-Bouvier, Ambassador of France to Montenegro, Liliana Trofim, Senior Project Office at the Council of Europe and Lejla Dervisagic, Head of CoE Office in Podgorica.
Participants from law enforcement, prosecution services and other relevant institutions are working with trainers Ronan Mouchoux and Jean-Pierre Bonnet on situations that public authorities increasingly face both online and offline: How to recognize when offensive or disturbing speech escalates into incitement to hatred, public disorder or criminal activity.
One point made by our Council of Europe colleague set the tone particularly well: the purpose is not to censor information or restrict legitimate expression. The challenge is to recognise when content and its context create consequences that may require institutions to act.
And when law enforcement intervention is required, the threshold matters just as much as the response itself. Any action must have a clear legal basis, be necessary in the circumstances and remain proportionate to the risk being addressed.
This makes the subject much more complex than simply identifying “harmful content”. It requires legal judgement, an understanding of context and potential impact, and close cooperation between investigators, prosecutors and other institutions responsible for protecting both public safety and fundamental rights.
For WB3C, this is where capacity building can make a difference by working through realistic scenarios, discussing difficult thresholds and helping practitioners make sound decisions when the answer is not immediately obvious.

At the Human In in the Loop conference at Infofest in Budva, this week, WB3C’s Director of Programmes joined the panel “Cyber Resilience in Practice: NIS2, DORA and the New Legislative Framework.”
He highlighted how WB3C combines academic programmes and practical training to help critical entities meet their obligations.
He also stressed the value of regional cyber exercises in testing decisions, coordination and the continuity of essential services.
Through its EU-funded work, WB3C is developing training tailored to the needs of each country and critical sector in the Western Balkans.