Events

A highly productive week in Valencia at the 5th Edition of the Valencia Cybersecurity Bootcamp, organized by Microsoft. It was a privilege for the Western Balkans Cyber Capacity Centre (WB3C) to participate in this esteemed gathering.
The bootcamp provided a platform for in-depth dialogue on pressing global cyber issues. The sessions - from AI and cybersecurity to incident response and international law in cyberspace - offered valuable insights into the current digital security landscape. Engaging with such a distinguished group of professionals, including diplomats, legal experts and technical leaders from organizations like FIRST, OAS and the UN, was immensely beneficial.

Our colleagues, Gilles Schwoerer, Head of WB3C, and Vanja Radović, Project Assistant, representing the Centre, joined by colleagues from the region Marija Matić of the Ministry of Interior, Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Lendita Haxhitasim, a diplomat from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Kosovo*, were pleased to engage with the global cybersecurity community and bring some interesting insights and best practices back to the Western Balkans.
As a young woman in cybersecurity, Vanja Radović noted: "As a newcomer to this field, the bootcamp was a fantastic opportunity for professional development and expanding my horizons. Learning from leading experts and connecting with peers from around the world was incredibly valuable for our work at the Centre and for me personally."
Thank you to Microsoft and all the organizers for a well-designed and effective event.

WB3C joined the 15th 2BS Forum in Budva, 3–4 October, at Hotel Splendid. The focus: volatility, hybrid threats and practical cooperation for regional resilience. The Forum marked its jubilee with new formats, including StratCom Talks that put strategic communications and cognitive security on the main stage. 

Our Head Gilles Schwoerer joined Ivan Stanković of Čikom in a panel on AI for capacity building and cybersecurity moderated by Snezana Nikcevic. We stressed outcome-based training, human-in-the-loop assurance and AI-assisted triage to lift SOC and CSIRT performance.

Combating migrant smuggling requires cutting-edge skills and cross-border collaboration. That’s why the Western Balkans Cyber Capacity Centre (WB3C) expert team was on the ground, training seven officers from the Montenegrin Air and Border Police.

Together with OLTIM - Office for Combating Illicit Trafficking of Migrants (French investigative unit for tracking and dismantling migrant smuggling), we equipped them with foundation tools to tackle modern threats:
✅ Using OSINT & Dark Web research to track criminal networks;
✅ Uncovering the sale of fake documents and tracing illicit financial flows.

Proud to support our partners in building skills for a safer region. International cooperation and capacity building are key to combating cross-border crime and dismantling the criminal networks behind migrant smuggling.

WB3C joined Europol’s Cybercrime Conference in the Hague last week, contributing to the panel on “Moving towards global cooperation.”
Our Program Director and Head of WB3C, Gilles Schwoerer, presented the WB3C’s journey and its recent evolution into an international organization, and showcased our degree programs on criminal investigations delivered with the Université de Technologie de Troyes.

Key takeaways:
➡️ Stronger bridges are needed between law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and the regional cybersecurity community.
➡️ Case debriefs underscored how public–private cooperation accelerates major cybercrime investigations.
➡️ New collaboration tracks opened with: Université Grenoble Alpes, University of Lodz, European Security and Defence College (ESDC) and the Center for International Legal Cooperation (CILC).

Thank you to the organizers and partners for the insightful exchanges. WB3C will continue to connect LEAs with other government branches and industry, but also with academia, in order to support the cyber ecosystem in the Western Balkans.

We were honoured to participate in the annual Western Balkans Digital Summit in Skopje, a core side-event of the Berlin Process that sets the stage for the upcoming Western Balkans Leaders' Summit. The event featured high-level dialogues with prominent voices, including the European Commission, Regional Cooperation Council (RCC), International Telecommunication Union (ITU), ministers responsible for digital transformation and cybersecurity from across the region, and leading European experts. These conversations reinforced the critical link between regional security and digital transformation.
This gathering was a powerful reminder that regional security and digital transformation go hand-in-hand. It's clear that cybersecurity is no longer a standalone technical issue, but the essential trust-builder that enables integration across digital services, critical sectors and ultimately, with the EU's single market. 
We were proud to see our WB3C cybercrime trainer, Yannick Casse, take the stage on a panel dedicated to cybersecurity solutions. He presented the WB3C as the primary regional hub for building cyber capabilities and the essential platform for fostering cross-border cooperation, the key enabler for implementing regional cybersecurity policies and fight against cybercrime. 

Beyond the panel, our colleagues Vanja Madzgalj MBE and Guillaume Narjollet used the opportunity to hold productive meetings with our key stakeholders and expand our network with new contacts, reinforcing the partnerships that are central to our mission.

The message in Skopje was clear: collaboration is our greatest asset. We return energized to continue our work across cybersecurity, cybercrime and cyberdiplomacy, looking with enthusiasm into our work plan for the next three months, which will bring some exciting activities with ransomware as the central theme.

We are grateful to the IDLO - International Development Law Organization for the invitation to contribute to a specialized session for prosecutors and judges in Montenegro. 

Our Head, Mr. Gilles Schwoerer, presented on the groundbreaking international cooperation mechanisms that led to the successful takedowns of encrypted criminal platforms like Encrochat, SkyECC and AnOM. These cases demonstrate how global law enforcement collaboration is essential to dismantle organized crime networks operating in the digital space.

An important connection was made with Ms. Masa Adzic, Director of the Secretariat of the Centre for Training in Judiciary and State Prosecution (Centar za obuku u sudstvu i državnom tužilaštvu). This meeting opened concrete avenues for future collaboration between our organizations, aligning perfectly with WB3C's mission to strengthen the region's capacity to investigate and prosecute cybercrime and organized crime.

Today, Western Balkans Cyber Capacity Centre (WB3C) kicks off a four-day training with International Telecommunication Union on Critical Information Infrastructure Protection (CIIP) and MISP platform for participants across the Western Balkans, joined this round by colleagues from Georgia and Ukraine. 

What we cover and why it matters: we start by CIIP fundamentals - how critical services interconnect, the evolving threat landscape, national-level risk management and incident response - so policies and guidelines rest on shared concepts.

We then turn from theory to practice through an interactive exercise on identifying and designating CII across sectors, comparing approaches and criteria country by country to understand what actually works. 

The rest of the training is hands-on with MISP. Participants will:
-Turn real threats into clear, structured intel.
-Create events, then add context and details to enrich them.
-Link activity to MITRE ATT&CK so teams speak the same language.

Finally, we cover automation: set up feeds, sync across MISP servers, export to detection tools and script routine tasks - so teams leave with repeatable workflows and a MISP setup they can run at home.

The goal: shared methods, practical tooling and an exchange of experience from each country that strengthens regional resilience. 

Valentina Stadnic, Program Officer at the ITU Office for Europe, Orhan Osmani Head of Cybersecurity Division at ITU and Gilles Schwoerer, Head of WB3C welcomed the participants while Tadas Jakstas, PhD, CIIP Expert, led the training on Day 1 and 2, while Ján Skalný, expert from the SK-CERT, led the training on Days 3 and 4 on using the MISP platform.  

Our 1-year Digital Forensics course for police investigators, prepared and delivered in conjunction with the Université de Technologie de Troyes, which started in February this year, is well underway. Session 4, which ran over the past two weeks (8-19 September) focused on hands-on acquisition, decoding and analysis of digital evidence in the forensic way: preserving originals and working on verifiable copies.

This time, we hosted Mickaël BUREAU, police officer with 25 years of experience, trained in forensics since 2013, and member of Office anti-cybercriminalité (OFAC) (Nanterre, near Paris). At OFAC, Mickaël supports judicial services with sealing, acquiring and analyzing data from computers, external drives, USBs, smartphones, tablets and more. He guided our group through professional tools that show not only how to extract and decode data, but why the decoded items appear as they do, supporting evidential integrity and use in court.

We have 16 participants on this course from across the Western Balkans’ law-enforcement communities. Head of WB3C Gilles Schwoerer explained the next steps in the journey towards obtaining internationally recognized professional license in digital forensics after the participants have successfully completed their final exam. 

The end of the session today was an opportunity to celebrate the birth of a son of one of our participants. Congratulations to the family!

Gilles Schwoerer, Head of WB3C, was invited by the Permanent Mission of Montenegro to the UN, OSCE and other International Organizations in Vienna to join virtually the September NATO Caucus sessions chaired by Montenegro, where he was able to contribute to the discussion with a presentation about our mission, activities and impact. We trust that this in-depth information was valuable for ambassadors and members of the Caucus and created an opportunity to discuss the role of the Centre in regional security.