The European Commission is encouraging cooperation across the region to improve cyber-security, according to Miguel Gonzalez-Sancho, head of the Commission’s unit for cyber technology and capacity planning. “From the EC’s perspective, if cyber security and data protection are not addressed sufficiently in a satisfactory way, the whole digital economy is in danger,” he told the EEMA ISSE 2018 cyber security conference in Brussels. Gonzalez-Sancho also added that the EU leadership was is seeking to eliminate the to the vulnerabilities created by the fact that the cyber response capacity differs from country to country in the region. “The threat is global, which means everyone is affected,” he said. “But there are differences in terms of [cyber defence] preparedness, and attackers will always go for the weakest link, putting the whole system at risk, so there is a need to increase resilience to cyber threats and incident response and to do it in a coordinated way.” While no specific policy moves have been announced, the main areas of focus in the cyber security policy the EU is developing, will be building resilience to cyber-attacks, creating effective cyber deterrence capabilities and strengthening international cooperation around cyber security. To achieve these aims, the bloc is backing research and development projects for capacity solutions through the Horizon 2020 initiative and for cross-border deployment and cooperation through the Connecting Europe Facility programme, which has a budget of €3bn.
