The impact of AI at the Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress

Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress will address the impact of AI on cybersecurity in its seventh edition. The event, which takes place from November 3rd to 5th, coincides with the celebration of the Smart City Expo World Congress and aims to respond to the impact of AI on the sector as one of the main threats in a context marked by the acceleration of digital transformation, the growing interconnectivity of systems, and their massive implementation.

The congress, organized jointly by Fira de Barcelona and the Cybersecurity Agency of Catalonia, will be structured around three main axes: cybersecurity as a strategic business and reputational factor; artificial intelligence, identity, and trust in the digital environment; and systemic, cyber-physical, and supply chain resilience.

With 150 international experts, 111 exhibitors, an extensive congress program, and new networking spaces, Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress will bring together the main European players in digital protection to focus on the security of industries, companies, critical infrastructure, and urban services in the face of increasingly complex attacks.

Under the motto ‘Connecting the European cybersecurity ecosystem’, BCC consolidates itself in 2026 as a major European commercial and educational platform to share knowledge, generate business opportunities, and promote alliances between public institutions, research centers, technology companies, and digital security managers.

Companies and experts

Companies such as EY, Fortinet, Cisco, SoSafe, Mastercard, Sophos, ClearSkies, Sirt, Trend Micro, ThreatLocker and Telefónica, among others, will showcase their solutions to anticipate, detect and respond to cyberattacks.

International speakers participating include Connie McIntosh, Head of Security at Ericsson; Sounil Yu, co-founder and Chief AI Safety Officer at Knostic and member of the Cybersecurity Hall of Fame; Pekka Jokinen, Deputy Director General of the Finnish National Cyber Security Centre; Arvin Bansal, CISO at C&S Wholesale Grocers and author of the TRACE Framework; and Marcos Gómez, CISO and Deputy Director of Corporate Security at INCIBE.

The panel of speakers is completed by specialists such as Tim Brown, former CISO at SolarWinds and partner at Team8; Holger Spohn, Principal Engineer at NATO; Seamus Lennon, from ThreatLocker; Darren James, from Specops Software; Rob Harrison, from Sophos; Carlos Solano, from NTT DATA; and Lino Santos, head of the National Cybersecurity Centre of Portugal, among others.

The offering is completed with parallel events that combine strategic analysis and practical cases, such as the session 'Cyber-resilience in the industrial supply chain', which will analyze the technological dependence between operator and manufacturer, or the National CyberHubs España Conference, which will bring together representatives from institutions, industry, academia and the technology ecosystem to study the evolution of cybersecurity strategies, the development of capabilities and talent, and the impact of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other emerging technologies.

Cybercrime

Cybercrime is a real threat. According to data from the National Cybersecurity Institute (INCIBE), 122,223 cybersecurity incidents were registered in Spain in 2025, 26% more than in 2024, and 237,028 vulnerable systems were detected and notified. Meanwhile, in Catalonia, the Cybersecurity Agency managed 6,544 cyber incidents during 2025, compared to 3,372 the previous year, and detected more than 9.1 billion attack attempts, of which more than 7 billion were blocked automatically and immediately.

Flavia Santoro, director of the Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress, remarks on it as follows: “The increase in cybercrime makes it necessary to have spaces where cybersecurity moves from theory to practice, such as BCC, which brings the entire ecosystem together in Barcelona to share needs, identify opportunities, and build new alliances”.