IoT Belfast 35: IoT Security & Trustworthiness

Join us for an evening of insights, innovation and networking as IoTBelfast heads to Digital Catapult in Belfast for our next meetup in September: IoT Belfast 35: IoT Security & Trustworthiness – Privacy, Identity and Trusted Connected Systems.

Taking place as part of Belfast Tech Week, this meetup will explore security and trustworthiness within the Internet of Things, looking at how organisations can collect, share and use connected-device data while maintaining privacy, security, identity and trust.

We’ll be digging into privacy-enhancing technologies, secure digital identity, data provenance and trusted connections between devices, as well as the challenges of applying effective policies and guardrails to increasingly autonomous and agentic systems.

Whether you’re a developer, engineer, researcher, technology professional, student or simply interested in IoT, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, digital identity, privacy-enhancing technologies or connected systems, you’ll come away with practical knowledge and insight from experts working in the field.

This event is part of #BelfastTechWeek - a week of events curated by the tech community, for the tech community.

About the Speakers & Topics

Tim Wood | Digital Catapult
Bio: Tim is a Technology Specialist in distributed systems. After completing his PhD in Cryptography in 2019, he worked in the defence sector as a consultant on cryptography for high-assurance environments. Since 2023, he has worked at Digital Catapult, where he advises on privacy-preserving digital identity standards and post-quantum cryptography adoption.

Talk: Privacy Enhancing Technologies for IoT

Description: Privacy Enhancing Technologies are advanced cryptographic protocols that allow organisations to gain insights from data without exposing the data itself. This talk will explore how PETs can be applied to IoT, including privacy-preserving AI model training through Federated Learning and population-level statistics through Multi-Party Computation.

Keerthi Thomas | Digital Catapult
Bio: Keerthi is a Senior Technologist at Digital Catapult, specialising in digital identity, trust and decentralised systems. With over 20 years’ industry experience, he contributes to BSI and ISO standardisation in decentralised identity management.

Talk: Enabling Know Your Assets/Agents (KYA) in Trusted Networks

Description: Keerthi will explore digital identity for IoT devices and autonomous agents, secure peer-to-peer connections and protocols to support data provenance, decentralised access control and policies needed for increasingly agentic systems.

Speaker 3: To Be Announced!

Agenda

6:30 pm – Doors open, informal networking and refreshments
7:00 pm – Welcome and introductions from Martin Naughton/Galvia Digital and Digital Catapult
7:10 pm – Talks begin
Tim Wood – Privacy Enhancing Technologies for IoT
15 minutes followed by 5 minutes of Q&A
Keerthi Thomas – Enabling Know Your Assets/Agents (KYA) in Trusted Networks
15 minutes followed by 5 minutes of Q&A
Speaker 3 – Name and talk to be announced soon
15 minutes followed by 5 minutes of Q&A
8:10 pm (Approximately) – Networking, refreshments and informal discussions
9:30 pm – Event close

Event Details

Venue: Digital Catapult, 6th Floor, 8 Lanyon Place, Belfast, BT1 3LP
Date: Thursday, 24 September 2026
Time: 6:30 pm–9:30 pm
Host: Digital Catapult
Part of: Belfast Tech Week 2026

Upon arrival, attendees should enter 8 Lanyon Place and make their way to Digital Catapult on the sixth floor. Any additional reception or access instructions will be shared with attendees before the event.

• Pizza, light refreshments, beer and soft drinks will be provided.
• Food and drinks will primarily be served in the breakout and kitchen area adjacent to the event space.
• This event is facilitated by Martin Naughton and Galvia Digital. If you have any questions about the event, or if you’re interested in speaking at or hosting a future meetup, please get in touch.

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