This coming Thursday April 9the technology sector has an unavoidable event in Madrid in the digital trust event Madrid 2026 “IT leadership: generating digital trust in the business.” Organized by Byte TI, and sponsored by HCL Software, Kaspersky, Commvault, SUSE, Route, Sophos, Barracuda and Penteo, the meeting seeks to analyze how CIOs, CISOs and IT managers are addressing the challenges that companies face today. He digital trust event Madrid 2026 will be supported on four fundamental pillars such as digital sovereignty, the increasingly strategic role of the CIO, the return on investment in Artificial Intelligence and the evolution of the CISO towards a purely results-oriented profile.
One of the central axes of the day It will be the panel dedicated to the challenges of digital sovereignty. Today, control over data and infrastructure has become a top priority. The growing dependence on non-European technology providers and the complex regulatory framework of the European Union—led by the GDPR and the Data Law—pose a scenario where autonomy is no longer just a technical issue, but a geopolitical one.
To delve deeper into this matter, Roberto Lázaro, Sales Director of SUSE; Alberto Lozano, Products & Banking Services IT Director of ING; Fernando de Pablo Martín, General Director of the Madrid City Council Digital Office and Raúl Martín García, Deputy Deputy Director of SEPE will analyze whether there really is a deep understanding of what digital sovereignty means in Spanish companies and Public Administrations and will present their strategies to guarantee control over critical areas such as digital identity and cloud infrastructure.
ROI of AI: justifying investments to management
Demonstrating the real value of artificial intelligence to management committees is a key challenge. Beatriz Méndez, CIO of Amadeus; Susana Lorenzo, CIO of Redexis; Ricard Guasch, CIO of Zurich; and Alberto Díaz Martín, CTIO of Encamina, will define how they measure ROI in AI projects, aligning them with corporate strategies and metrics that go beyond the financial, including operational efficiency, innovation and customer experience.
The discussion will prioritize projects with limited resources, addressing common errors in future valuations, cultural or talent barriers, and the low percentage of initiatives that reach production. The pressure for quick results will be balanced with long-term innovation, managing change in key processes and the impact of regulations on AI development.
Cybersecurity as a model
Cybersecurity will be analyzed not as an expense, but as a business accelerator at the table “The CISO as a business driver or why security is a competitive advantage.” In this slot, we will explore how the security manager has gone from being a purely technical profile to a strategic actor within the Management Committee.
Gabriel Moliné, CISO of Carrefour; Daniel Damas, CISO of Nationale-Nederlanden; Juan Manuel Muñoz, CISO of Madwy-Mapfre; and Álvaro Fernández, Sales Manager of Sophos Iberia, will talk about how protection can be balanced with agility and profitability, justifying investments beyond regulatory compliance. The role of AI in reducing defense operational costs and how new regulations, such as NIS2 or the EU AI Regulation, are influencing the cybersecurity roadmap of large corporations will be discussed.
Likewise, the digital trust event Madrid 2026 will feature a high-level interview with Mariano Domingo, CIO of AENA, who will share his vision on how to manage technology in one of the most important airport operators in the world. The session will delve into how the objectives of an IT department align with the business goals of a critical infrastructure that manages millions of passengers.
Speakers of the event
