At the first Cybersecurity Day held at PwC’s premises in Gasperich, Secretary of State of the Economy Francine Closener announced the creation of a cybersecurity competencies centre in the Grand Duchy.
To be launched in 2017, the centre will be based partly on the skill, experience and competencies acquired by Government initiatives such as CASES (promotion of information security in businesses) and CIRCL (post-incident coordination and action services).
Directed at both the private sector and public bodies, these two initiatives have been working for a number of years in fields such as awareness of threats and vulnerabilities, risk identification and analysis, and IT incident management. CASES and CIRCL are coordinated by the national cybersecurity promotion platform SECURITYMADEIN.LU.
In her address, Francine Closener confirmed the determination of the Ministry of the Economy to share existing knowledge more widely and to promote the creation of synergies between the key players by launching this new structure: “Drawing on the competencies already acquired by SECURITYMADEIN.LU and its partners, the centre will offer SMBs, individuals, start-ups and even public-sector players a number of new services focusing on three areas: intelligence, training, and testing. This involves providing information necessary for good governance, training by using attack scenarios simulating the environment of the business concerned, and checking the efficient security of IT systems and products.”
The aims of the competencies centre are firstly, in the short term, to increase the Grand Duchy’s current competitive advantage in the field of cybersecurity and secondly, in the medium term, to contribute to the development of emerging ecosystems in areas such as the Internet of Things (IoT), space technologies, and FinTech.
The Secretary of State of the Economy concluded by saying, “The concept of the centre is based both on the pooling of the proven competencies of a range of public- and private-sector players and on the dynamism emanating from the national ecosystem of cybersecurity. The new structure will help to reinforce the economic positioning and attractiveness of the Grand Duchy for businesses in the information and communication technologies sector.”
