Commission makes €11 million available to strengthen cybersecurity capabilities and cooperation

The European Commission will make €11 million of funding available for 22 new projects seeking to strengthen the European Union’s capacity to deter and mitigate cyber-threats and incidents, by employing the latest technologies. The projects, which have been selected following a recent call for proposals under the Connecting Europe Facility programme, will support various cybersecurity organisations in 18 Member States. The beneficiaries of the funding include Computer Security Incident Response teams, operators of essential services in the health, energy, transport and other sectors, as well as bodies dealing with the cybersecurity certification and testing, as defined in the EU Cybersecurity Act. They will start working after the summer on tools and skills necessary to comply with the requirements set by the NIS Directive and the Cybersecurity Act, while at the same time they will engage in activities aimed to enhance cooperation at the EU level. So far the EU has funded almost €47.5 million to reinforce EU cybersecurity between 2014 and 2020, through the Connecting Europe Facility programme. Furthermore, over €1 billion under the Digital Europe Programme will be directed towards the areas of focus of the new EU Cybersecurity Strategy. More information is available here. More information about Europe’s actions to strengthen cybersecurity capacities is available here and EU-funded cybersecurity projects can be found here.