On January 14, 2026, UBITECH’s Giannis Ledakis, Head of the Computing Systems & Software Engineering Research Group, moderated a high-level panel discussion titled “AI based Cybersecurity and the future of financial services resilience”, held in the scope of the AI Enables Cybersecurity Meetup. The event was organized by COSMOTE and supported by the Big Data Value Association (BDVA), alongside the Digital Europe projects VIGILANCE, coordinated by GFT Technologies, and CyberAId, coordinated by UBITECH. The panel brought together distinguished experts from across the financial and technology ecosystem, including Nikos Kogios from OTE Group, Kostas Metaxas of KM Cube, Konstantinos Kalogerakis from Cloud Office, and George Panou of Eurobank. Drawing from real-world operational, regulatory, and technological perspectives, the discussion explored how artificial intelligence is reshaping both cyber threats and cyber defense in the financial sector.
During the session, Giannis Ledakis emphasized that generative AI introduces profound challenges for both cybersecurity and finance, particularly by amplifying the scale, speed, and sophistication of attacks, yet he highlighted that the same technology—when combined with intelligent automation—creates new opportunities for adaptive, resilient defense mechanisms that can operate at machine speed. The panel converged on the view that GenAI-driven threats are already accelerating fraud, impersonation, and social engineering campaigns through deepfakes and automated attack tooling, making traditional, manual security approaches insufficient. In response, financial institutions increasingly rely on AI-powered, automated defenses capable of continuous monitoring, real-time detection, and rapid response across complex digital environments.
A central theme of the discussion was the need for multi-layered, resilient cybersecurity architectures that integrate diverse tools and large-scale data streams to support the full lifecycle of cyber resilience, from prevention and detection to mitigation and recovery. Within this context, the panel highlighted the role of European initiatives such as VIGILANCE, which is building an autonomous and scalable platform based on Zero Trust Architecture by combining AI, GenAI, blockchain, and quantum technologies to deliver real-time anomaly detection and adaptive risk assessment across interconnected critical infrastructures and supply chains. Complementing this approach, CyberAId focuses on an agentic AI infrastructure that autonomously coordinates advanced cybersecurity capabilities, covering prediction, monitoring, response, and reporting through AI-driven automation, eBPF-based monitoring, quantum-resistant cryptography, and privacy-preserving analytics.
Overall, the discussion underscored a decisive shift in how cybersecurity is perceived within financial services. Rather than being treated as a cost center, it is increasingly recognized as a strategic investment that underpins trust, regulatory compliance, operational resilience, and long-term business continuity in an era where AI-driven threats and defenses continue to evolve in parallel.
