Ringo Deloof is the Smartest Cyber Expert of 2024.
In October 2024 Telenet Business put around 200 IT professionals through twenty cybersecurity questions. Our founder won after a close race. Telenet interviewed him afterwards; this is what he said, and what it says about how we work at Deritron.
The competition
De Slimste Cyberexpert ("The Smartest Cyber Expert") is an online quiz Telenet Business runs every year during European Cybersecurity Month. The 2024 edition was the third. Around 200 candidates answered twenty questions across five categories, ranging from current events and technology to legislation and terminology.
So it isn't a purely technical test. To win you need to know how an attack works, but also what the law requires and which term means what. Ringo won after a tight finish and held the title for a year.
From teenage tinkering to his own company
Ringo started experimenting with computers as a teenager. After school he worked at several IT companies, then went independent as a consultant for clients including DHL, BNP Paribas Fortis and a government ministry.
Today he runs Deritron from Oostkamp, Belgium: custom software, IT solutions and security, with a team of six engineers.
Technology, rules, and what they mean in practice
Cybersecurity never stands still, and Ringo enjoys keeping up with the regulation that comes with it. What he finds most interesting, he told Telenet, is the link between three things: the technology, the rules, and what those two mean for a business in practice.
That's why building and securing sit in one team here. In the platform we build for Xcellerate, every device gets a security score based on encryption, malware protection, vulnerabilities and missing updates. Security becomes something an IT admin sees on a screen every morning, rather than a report in a drawer.
His advice for SMEs
“Find a reliable partner who can guide you through the complex regulation and threats.”
A small business rarely has its own security team, yet faces the same threats and, more and more, the same rules. His advice is simple: don't try to work it all out alone.
A good partner turns an audit or a new law into concrete steps in your own systems, and stays on afterwards. At Deritron we do that with audits, pen tests and compliance for GDPR, ISO 27001 and NIS2, and with custom software that takes it into account from the first line of code.
What's coming
“Cybersecurity is driven by malicious actors. We always have to try to stay one step ahead.”
Defenders react to what attackers come up with, so waiting means falling behind. Ringo names deepfakes and AI as the next big challenges: faking a voice or a face has become cheap, and AI makes phishing more convincing and quicker to set up.
No single product solves that on its own. It takes processes that don't rely on one phone call or one email, and systems you test again on a regular basis.
And after?
“I'll keep doing my work the way I always have.”
That's what he said about winning. Want to know where your systems stand, or have software built that holds up to an audit? Let us know.