In 2020, there is no need to doubt the threat posed by phishing. We could spend so much time trying to size the risk that phishing poses to our society, our organisations. I am not even sure I could give you an accurate estimation of this risk. There is so much unknown. However, for many of us, being targeted by cyber-attacks using phishing is now part of our typical day, or, at least, a typical week.

The month of October is traditionally dedicated to cyber security. We would like to draw your attention to 2 interesting initiatives: the European research and education network GÉANT is launching a campaign to raise cyber security awareness within its community and the national awareness campaign will be focusing on two-factor authentication this year.

Thanks to the technology developed by the Institute of Astronomy and the high-performance Belnet connection, (future) astronomers will be able to continue their research from 3,000 kilometres away during the COVID-19 crisis. Belnet spoke with Prof. Hans Van Winckel, Head of Astronomy at the KU Leuven.

During this corona crisis, Belnet is doing everything it can to respond to the changing requirements of the organisations connected to us. To this end we have recently made a number of emergency changes to increase the capacity of certain clients.

Belnet has implemented a plan in response to the outbreak of the corona virus in our country. In this way we wish to guarantee the continuity of our service and protect our employees.

More than 80 institutions have already expressed their interest and a dozen of them have already made a formal commitment.

From 16 to 20 June, Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, hosted TNC, the conference organised by GÉANT, which brings together the national research networks in Europe and other continents.