On 4-5 June 2019, Interreg Europe CYBER project partners gathered together to share the good practices and the results of project activities implemented at the regional level, as well as to elaborate the next steps of the project. This third meeting was hosted by Digital Wallonia, the regional agency in charge of the digital transformation of the Belgium‘s Wallonia region.
The two-day meeting started with the presentation of the Digital Wallonia strategy for securing digital transformation of the region and its developed KIS (Keep It Secure) mechanism, which has been designed to help regional SMEs to improve their resilience against digital threats.
First, an interactive session was organised to collect the regional needs for improvement and rank them according to the main cyber-related challenges previously identified in the SWOT analysis. Then, all partners engaged in a Good Practice Stock Exchange: they had to deliver a 3-minute pitch for each good practice identified in their territory and answer the questions from the other partners, that had the possibility to “invest” in the practices that better meet their needs. The Brittany Region, with its Cyber Breakfast initiative organised by Bretagne Development Innovation, was recognised as one of the most significant regional initiative.
Interreg Europe CYBER project partners also paid a visit to the Thales Cybersecurity Training Centre, a unique Belgium-based centre, which carries out real-life simulations of cyber-attacks and helps the business to improve their cybersecurity readiness. The visit ended with a presentation of two key players of the regional ecosystem: the Wallonia-based innovation centre MultiTel and the regional cybersecurity research centre CETIC.
Finally, project partners visited the European Commission Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT), where a workshop titled ‘From Europe to Wallonia: various but complementary Cybersecurity approaches at different levels of governance’ was held together with the European Commission, the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium and the regional Infopôle ICT Cluster. Besides discussing the cybersecurity landscape at the EU, national and regional levels, the workshop also overviewed the future Horizon Europe and Digital Europe (2021-2027) programmes, where cybersecurity is indicated among the five key areas.
The next Interreg Europe CYBER project partners meeting will take place on 21-22 October in Spain and will be hosted by the Castilla y León region.
