April was a big month for Cybersecurity Policy with 3 important announcements on the 18th of April. These were all addressed in our April Policy Call reserved for members. ECSO would like to share a high level summary of these news with the Cybersecurity community. Overall, these developments demonstrate the EU’s commitment to improving cybersecurity and building a more resilient digital environment.
ECSO has been instrumental in advising, participating and creating policy recommendations that were used to create this legislative package and ECSO is mentioned abundantly in the documentation available.
The EU Cyber Solidarity Act will be funded by €1.1 billion, and it will include three pillars:
EU Cyber Solidarity Act
- A European Cyber Shield based on the network of SOCs across EU Member States to detect cyberattacks.
Last year, ECSO wrote a paper advocating for a network of SOCs that exchange CTI at EU level. This paper helped the European Commission to have an overview of the industry position on this topic when writing the Cyber Solidarity Act.
One call for SOCs of €110 million has already been closed and other calls will open in 2023 and 2024 under the Digital Europe Programme.
- A Cyber Emergency Mechanism that will focus on strengthening preparedness of critical entities (with pentesting, bug bounties and the like), creating an EU Cybersecurity Reserve, provide financial support for national authorities of the Member States to provide mutual assistance.
This initiative takes inspiration from the way Ukraine defended itself against Russia.
To participate in this Cyber Reserve, companies will have to be certified under a new cybersecurity act certification.
- A Cybersecurity Incident Review Mechanism to assess the impact of large-scale cyber-attacks (with the collaboration of EU-CyCLONe, CSIRTs, and ENISA)..
Press release here.
Launch of the Cybersecurity Skills Academy
The Cybersecurity Skills Academy will be a framework to put together private and public initiatives that focus on cybersecurity skills (like our Women4Cyber Academy).
The platform will support people that want to have a career in cybersecurity and allow them to obtain access to cybersecurity courses, scholarships, and certifications.
Website of the Academy here.
Amendment of the Cybersecurity Act
With this amendment to the Cybersecurity Act, the Commission wants to have a certification scheme for “managed security services”.
Two proposals for a Council Recommendation to support Member States in providing Digital Skills
Leveraging on the European Year of Skills, the proposal wants to address the lack of whole government approach to digital education and the general lack of digital skills in society.
More information here
