On Tuesday, November 15, 2022, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Belgrade, the Group of Network Operators of Serbia gathered for its eighth annual conference. The gathering was attended by over 120 experts from the country and abroad, and it was possible to follow it via video stream.
The conference was held this year with the support of the Serbian National Internet Domain Registry (RNIDS), Unicom Telecom and Serbian Open Exchange (SOX), as well as sponsors RIPE NCC, Internet Society and Team Cymru.
The conference was opened by Dejan Djukić, director of the Serbian domain name registry, who emphasized the institutional support RNIDS foundation is providing to the RSNOG community from the very beginning and praised the increasing quality and number of conference participants. After him, Danko Jevtović, Vice President of the ICANN Board of Directors, introduced the attendees to the activities of this global organization that are important for domestic Internet operators.
This was followed by a block of presentations in which the first lecture was given by Boško Radivojević. He talked about FinOps, i.e. how to achieve harmony between the finance sector and network engineers when it comes to dynamic cloud services. The next one was presented by John Brown of Team Cymru, a global leader in information security. Mr. Braun talked about ways to combat distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and the free tool offered to the community by Team Cymru (Unwanted Traffic Removal Service). Then it was Goran Slavić from NCR who spoke to the audience about 10 things to know when it comes to software-defined Wide Area Networks and their various aspects – from installation, through maintenance, to challenges that arise in application and how to overcome them. Finally, Nataša Mojsilović from RIPE NCC introduced domestic Internet operators to the activities of this organization that coordinates internet addressing and routing of content in European Internet networks. Natasa pointed out that the Serbian Internet community actively participates in trainings, courses and events organized by RIPE. Thanks to this, RIPE chose Serbia as the venue for the big annual RIPE 85 conference, which at the end of October this year in Belgrade gathered over 500 internet professionals from 70 countries from the region of Europe, the Middle East and part of Central Asia.
The second block of the conference was dedicated to the state of cybersecurity in Serbia. The discussion was moderated by Dunja Majstorović from Siemens Energy, and the participants were Sergej Stolić from A1 Serbia, Aleksandar Kostadinović from RNIDS, Daniela Andrović from National CERT – RATEL, Viktor Varga from Unicom Telecom, Sergej Petković from Nova Defense as well as Darko Šehović from FIN-CSIRT – Association of Serbian Banks. Each participant commented on the current situation, challenges and possible directions of development when it comes to improving information security of private companies, the state, but also end users.
The third block was dedicated to the topic of developing a portfolio of digital services, which is a topical thing for all operators. The discussion was moderated by Slobodan Marković from UNDP, and it was attended by Natali Delić from Telekom Srbija, Marija Stojanović from Yettel, Goran Stojadinović from A1 Serbia and Kosta Andrić from ICT Hub. During the discussion, they discussed how operators make their digital service offerings, what are the reactions of users and what are their expectations, what kind of internal adjustments the provision of such services requires and what trends are expected in this area in the future.
Finally, the traditional RSNOG quiz on knowledge of Internet networking, information security and cyber culture was organized, which this year was sponsored by the Serbian Open Exchange (SOX). The first prize was a three-day stay on Zlatibor for two people, while the second and third prizes were vouchers for the purchase of electronic equipment and sensors for the development of prototypes.