Munich Security Conference 2026: Digital Sovereignty as a Survival Strategy

Munich Security Conference (MSC): Why digital sovereignty must be part of our survival strategy in 2026.

This year's Munich Security Conference leaves behind an oppressive image, characterized by the metaphor of "wrecking ball politics."

While we in IT security have spent years trying to keep the global digital infrastructure stable through software patches and international data security agreements, we are now seeing actors deliberately tearing down these pillars. For those of us in the field of cybersecurity, the message is clear: the era of a reliable digital order under the protective umbrella of the US is over.
When transactional deals are placed above a community of values guided by principles, it means the end of digital convenience for Europe.

The End of the Transatlantic Guarantee: Europe Faces a New Era of Cyber Vulnerability

For a long time, Europe has relied on an invisible service level agreement with the United States, in which we exchanged data and market share for a promise of military protection and free markets. However, the 2026 Munich Security Conference and its MCSC cybersecurity congress make it clear that this promise is now subject to new conditions and is increasingly being used as a bargaining chip for geopolitical and economic interests.

As these guarantees of protection crumble, countries such as Russia and China are massively expanding their offensive cyber operations against European companies, infrastructures, and government institutions. In our analyses, we are observing an increase in disinformation campaigns and attacks on critical infrastructures that aim to directly test the resilience of our society and exploit technological dependencies.

In such a world, digital sovereignty is no longer a protectionist luxury, but the necessary immune system of a resilient society.

To achieve this resilience, Europe must pool its power resources and develop common tools that function technologically independently of geopolitical power structures. In cybersecurity, this requires consistent diversification of our supply chains for hardware, cyber threat intelligence, and software solutions. At the same time, the integrity of our digital systems must be ensured in order to counteract the widespread loss of trust in democratic institutions. This requires verifiable standards for trustworthy architectures, especially for AI-supported systems.

Only through transparency and technological self-determination can we work to make our European systems more resistant to manipulation than authoritarian alternatives.

From a cybersecurity perspective, the year 2026 marks a turning

We can no longer view cyber risks in isolation as technical vulnerabilities; they are inextricably intertwined with geopolitical upheavals. Modern cyber risk management today must go far beyond securing networks. It must recognize the political instability of partner states and the strategic instrumentalization of technology dependencies as primary threat vectors.

True resilience can only be achieved when we not only manage cyber risks,
but actively minimize them through sovereignty

This means that companies and government actors in Europe must identify and reduce their dependence on monolithic, non-European platforms as a cluster risk. When the international order is uncertain, the ability to autonomously control and defend one's own digital infrastructure becomes the most important currency.

Proactive risk management is therefore synonymous with political capacity to act today: those who do not control their own risks become pawns of those who wield the wrecking ball. At asvin, we provide an important part of the necessary foundations for this. Starting with strong expertise in researching new cybersecurity risks, such as in the areas of agentic AI and deepfakes, as well as the collection and processing of cyber threat intelligence and solutions for analyzing cybersecurity risks.