DORSUM CLUB BUDAPEST OCTOBER 17, 2022 – Cybersecurity, Blockchain and the state of innovative digitalisation

According to years of tradition, the annual autumn Dorsum Club was held at the Costes Downtown restaurant in the heart of Budapest.

In the charming atmosphere we heard first about DORA (the Digital Operational Resilience Act), as told through an excellent presentation by our colleague, Péter Sallai. The main purpose of the Act is to help the banking sector prepare against cyberattacks. Of note is that industry players are now spending 10% of their entire operations budget on combatting such attacks.

Afterwards Zsolt Nyéki, head of Dorsum’s Blockchain Competence Center talked about the blockchain trends in Hungary and all around the world. He acknowledged that everyone is looking for good use-case scenarios for the blockchain and went on to say that the establishment of an entry point to the crypto asset market can serve as a gateway quick-win solution for investment providers. He also added that in a couple of decades all securities will be replaced by tokenized digital versions, just like dematerialized securities replaced their former, material form.

Finally, Jai Waterman, the CEO of the Canadian Blockstation company gave us a special and unusual insight into blockchain systems. To demonstrate the power of the blockchain’s consensus mechanism, ha gave a 2000Ft bill to an audience member, who gave it to another, then Jai gave the bill to someone else on the other side of the room. Watch what happened:

https://fb.watch/gNhpXGl-kS/

We also hosted our usual round table discussion, where Anikó Szombati (MNB), Bálint Fischer (Dorsum), Zoltán Ács (MKB) and Zoltán Szoleczki (OTP) discussed the state of digitalisation and innovation in the banking world.

Some of the key highlights from the discussion:

• Market players focus too much on front-end solutions, neglecting core systems, which is sure to take its toll on everyone involved in the long term
• It’s not enough to innovate for innovation’s sake – new ideas need to be validated quickly and efficiently which can be done by investing in external experimental pilot projects, protecting the bank’s brand in case the pilot fails
• OTP is committed to its startup incubator program, which can yield long-term successful development partnerships. Their results are measured by actual profit, only 10% of the invested resources can be written off, the other 90% needs to return on the investment
• Banks are ready to innovate, but too often they fall into the trap of taking on too much at once – smaller steps and quickly deployed launches are the key to successful innovation, where complexity doesn’t hinder progress

We’re grateful for the presentations and the enlightening insights of our speakers, and we also want to thank all the guests who attended the evening.