EU observatory for research on cybersecurity and privacy presents new tools for SMEs in Leon, Spain

Today, the 25th of October 2017, the European DIGITAL SME Alliance and cyberwatching.eu organized the first SME workshop on cybersecurity research and innovation at ENISE, Spain’s most important event on cybersecurity. Aimed at ‘Bridging R&I with the business world’, the workshop was the first of 10 similar events that will take place across Europe until 2020.

Experiences and new tools for the business community to use publicly funded R&I solutions in order to innovate and build new products were presented at the workshop. ‘Cybersecurity vendors are facing a huge challenge to keep up with an ever-increasing speed of innovation and technological change. This particularly affects small and medium sized vendors (SMEs) that must establish strong links with the research community to remain competitive in the market’ – commented Javier Tobal of the AEI Ciberseguridad, in his closing remarks.

During the workshop, SME representatives, researchers and public sector officers had a chance to know more about Cyberwatching.eu, the Horizon 2020 project developed to enhance the cooperation between cybersecurity research and SMEs.

A panel discussion was moderated by Mark Miller of Conceptivity, a Swiss SME that focuses on risk management and security for supply chain in aviation and transport sectors. Participants were introduced to the successful use of R&I products in the development of business cases. The success story of Spanish company Panda Security was presented by Raúl Pérez García, Global Presales Manager.

Finally, further tools that help companies to deal with the cybersecurity challenges were presented by Laura Senatore of Italian consultancy company ICT Legal and Pablo Montoliu Zunzunegui of the insurance company AON. Key topics were the chanllenges of the upcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation and the role of cyber insurances.

More information on the tools for SMEs and on future workshops is available at www.cyberwatching.eu.