Piet De Vaere
Piet De Vaere works on product security and secure system design. He runs a small consultancy, Product Security Guru GmbH, helping companies meet cybersecurity requirements and design more secure connected products. He’s especially involved with the EU Cyber Resilience Act and supports organizations in interpreting and applying it.
Piet holds a PhD from ETH Zurich and teaches Network Security at the same university. His research focuses on embedded systems, industrial networks, and practical security challenges in connected devices.
He also participates in standardization efforts related to EU cybersecurity policy, particularly the Cyber Resilience Act.
Sessions
As of August 1st, 2025, the EU’s Radio Equipment Directive enforces new cybersecurity requirements. For the first time, broad categories of everyday devices — not just critical infrastructure or niche tech — must meet mandatory security standards. This talk breaks down how we got here, why it matters, and what’s breaking in the process. We’ll look at the political and technical hurdles in rolling this out, what it means for manufacturers, and how it connects to the looming Cyber Resilience Act.
Smart devices are deeply embedded in the physical world—they can see, hear, and control things around us, often with zero real limits. When they’re hacked, it’s not just your data on the line—it’s your safety, privacy, and environment. In this talk, I’ll share some new ideas for putting a layer of access control between these devices and the real world, so we stop giving them a blank check.