Cyberwatching.eu stimulating the cybersecurity SME environment across Europe

Cyberwatching.eu representatives were recently active in various initiatives across Europe to spread the word about the project’ s outcomes across Europe, establish synergies with other relevant H2020 initiatives and engage with the European cybersecurity community.

Cyberwatching.eu was among the many exhibitors that joined FIC2020 in Lille, one of the leading European event on cybersecurity and digital trust, with a joint info-booth in collaboration with three other H2020 initiatives related to cybersecurity and privacy, namely CyberSec4Europe, CYBERWISER.eu and SMESEC.

Over the three days of the event, the info booth gathered a broad audience spanning from ICT intensive SMEs, cybersecurity providers as well as public sector organisations.

This allowed Cyberwatching.eu to bring into the spotlight key outcomes such as the GDPR Temperature Tool which helps SMEs to understand where they stand with respect to the GDPR in terms of risks of sanctions. The tool consists of questions about data processing activities, also providing an indication of the company’s risk of sanctions and corresponding actionable recommendations coming directly from ICT Legal Consulting, a law firm with plenty of expertise in the area.

The event was also the perfect opportunity to bring onboard ICT intensive SMEs and cybersecurity providers as part of the Marketplace, where they can benefit from free visibility for their products and services, having them highly promoted to the over 2.000 cybersecurity passionate members of the Cyberwatching.eu community through workshops, webinars and other initiatives that Cyberwatching.eu is regularly carrying out.

On January 31^st , Cyberwatching.eu coordinator Nicholas Ferguson of Trust-IT Services also attended the 2^nd CYBERWISER.eu Open Pilot Workshop by chairing a panel session with two of the four Competence Pilot projects CyberSec4Europe, ECHO and SMESEC.

The discussion focussed around skills gap, cybersecurity awareness and training with the three initiatives sharing their direct experience with European SMEs and organisations. All three initiatives agreed on the key importance to provide guidance to organisations, which often they might be aware of cybersecurity threats and problems but simply don’t know where to start, so this make difficult for them to proper invest in services and get concrete help.

This is where all initiatives comes into play with different services and products allowing organisations to:

• Find their weak spots in the Cybersecurity Protection Framework and react to them with the guidance of SMESEC;
• Prepare their staff for cyberattacks improving their cyber skills thanks to the expertise of CYBERWISER.eu;
• Assess their risk of being fined using the GDPR Sanctions Tool developed by Cyberwatching.eu;
• Be part of a network of digital SMEs to benefit from best practices, services and direct connection to the European cybersecurity competence centres using CyberSec4Europe, and  ECHO