Demystifying Tech - including Cybersecurity - is a joint responsibility for industry, policymakers and society

As a local commerce platform, Wolt connects people looking to order food and other goods with people interested in selling and delivering them. To enable this, we develop a wide range of technologies – we are first and foremost a tech company. 

Behind the scenes of the platform, we have hundreds of people working on building Wolt’s products and services, while also being dedicated to ensuring the safety of those systems. At the same time, many policymakers are working to improve digital policies and regulatory frameworks to create safer experiences for people online. Rarely do these two world’s meet, but it is clear that both companies and policymakers alike share a common goal: to ensure digital processes are as secure as possible.

In our "Demystifying Tech" series, we aim to narrow this divide and establish forums for information exchange between policymakers and product developers. Previous workshops delved into topics such as the algorithms that courier partners interact with, how the technology behind our platform makes the life more convenient for consumers, and the ways our AI helps merchants' grow their business more efficiently. In our fourth event, we tackled cybersecurity together with Dragos Tudorache, Member of the European Parliament, and Antti Vähä-Sipilä, Wolt’s Director of Product Security.

“It is a joint responsibility to demystify tech, this is why I was attracted by the title - industry, policy and society should join hands” - Dragos Tudorache, Member of the European Parliament

Our co-host Dragos Tudorache provided his perspective on how the element of trust between different stakeholders should be strengthened and gave valuable insight into recent EU regulation spheres that touch on the topic, such as the Cyber Resilience Act, the Cyber Solidarity Act and the AI Act - all of which impacts tech companies such as Wolt. Now that the EU institutions have finalised them, these measures will be implemented in the coming years.

“If you want to do effective cybersecurity, governments have to work with the private sector. Cyber is the first area, second area is the safety of tech itself (for example of algorithms) the element of trust is very important” - Dragos Tudorache, Member of the European Parliament

Having gained a deeper understanding of the legislative framework, Antti Vähä-Sipilä guided us through the fundamental elements of how Wolt ensures the safety of our business and customers. He also explained how autonomous teams and distributed architecture influence cybersecurity, highlighting the risks associated with internal misuse and accidental incidents.

Both of our speakers agreed that it will be necessary in the future to broaden our perspective when thinking about security. One aspect to consider is the influence of organizational cultures. This includes examining the role of security functions within organizational development, understanding what organizational and cultural security controls can glean from safety engineering practices, and exploring the potential role of legislation in this context (perhaps this could serve as the topic for our next workshop?!).

“Distributed teams and distributed architecture also require companies’ security functions to align with these realities. Software development can also learn a lot from industries with a strong safety culture and well-established post-incident review processes. Building such a security culture can become a part of each team’s local practices.” - Antti Vähä-Sipilä, Director of Product Safety at Wolt

We will continue working with policymakers in the Demystifying Tech workshop series as we strongly believe that greater understanding by all parties involved and affected by EU legislation can contribute to better outcomes for society. In addition to the Demystifying series, we take pride in being a frontrunner in algorithmic transparency, as we have been  publishing the Wolt Algorithmic Transparency Report for many years already. The report showcases our efforts to ensure our operations are as secure and transparent as possible and further demystify tech.