The new EU Cybersecurity Strategy and its impact on Member States and industry

Jochen Michels, Head of Public Affairs Europe

States, societies and economies are in a transition phase, with digitalization advancing, accelerated by the global corona pandemic that has highlighted the need for action for sustainable and secure digitization. The threat landscape is also changing at an increasingly rapid pace, attacks are becoming more targeted, and we see ransomware evolving into targeted ransomware, new online banking and payments attack vectors, more attacks targeting critical infrastructure and against non-PC targets, an increasing sophistication of attack methods, and much more. How can we deal with that?

In December 2020, the European Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy presented the EU's Cybersecurity Strategy for the Digital Decade. The strategy aims to reinforce collective resilience against cyberthreats. All citizens and businesses should fully benefit from trustworthy and reliable digital tools and services.

In the EU Cyberpolicy Forum, high-level experts will discuss how this can be achieved. The speakers represent different stakeholder groups and guarantee an interesting discussion from different perspectives:

• Bart Groothuis, Member of European Parliament, rapporteur on the NIS2 Directive

• Lorena Boix Alonso, Director for Digital Society, Trust & Cybersecurity, DG CONNECT, European Commission

• Guillaume Poupard, Director General, French National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI)

• Susana Asensio, Member of the Board of Directors, Industrial Cybersecurity Center, Spain

• Eugene Kaspersky, CEO, Kaspersky

Not only the European Union on the whole, but also many of its Member States have made increasing cybersecurity and resilience against cyberthreats a high political priority. Due to the international and cross-border significance of cybersecurity, it is important to proceed in a coordinated manner and to find common solutions at the European level that at the same time meet requirements in the respective Member States.

As cybersecurity requires constant innovation to keep up with evolving threats, the speakers will discuss how research and development can be fostered in a targeted and coordinated manner and how appropriate capacity can be build up. Is a change in thinking necessary? How can cybersecurity be used as the basis for sustainable digitization and thus become a success factor? Who can make which contributions? How can cooperation between industry, academia and public administrations be further strengthened?

The discussion will focus on strategic initiatives of the EU Cybersecurity Strategy, on concrete activities like critical infrastructure protection or industrial cybersecurity, cross-border and cross-industry cooperation, cyberthreat intelligence sharing, or activities to overcome the existing fragmentation which weakens cybersecurity across Europe.

We look forward to discussing these important topics with you: to register for the event, please sign up here. After your registration, you will receive a participation link and all required details to join the webinar.