Cybersecurity for European and American SMEs

The European Commission has asked us to forward you an invitation to a webinar on ‘cybersecurity’. The first webinar of the series will be on the topic of ‘cybersecurity’ and will take place on 25 January 2022 from 15:00 to 17:00 (Brussels time).

This webinar is the first of a series of trainings/listening sessions for European and U.S. SMEs on digital transformation, which takes place in the context of Trade and Technology Council between the European Union and the United States.

A recent survey by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity reveals that for over 80% of SMEs cyber-security attacks can have serious negative impact on their business within just a week of the issues happening and for 57% of them this could even mean to go bankrupt or close down the business. As businesses have increasingly gone digital due to the COVD-19 pandemic, cybersecurity has emerged as an even greater challenge for SMEs and the need for stronger cybersecurity awareness and preparedness has become even more evident.

For these reasons, the webinar will consist of two parts.

• In the first part of the webinar, Lucio Gonzalez Jimenez from SGS Brightsight CyberLab will give a training on how SMEs can recognize cybercriminals and online threats to their business, ; protect themselves from the risks of operating on the Internet; and make the products and services they sell cyber-secure . A trainer from the United States may also be present.
• In the second part of the webinar, SMEs in the European Union and the United States will discuss their own experiences about cybersecurity challenges and the solutions they have found. SMEs will also have the chance to provide recommendations to the EU and U.S. chairs of the working group on which measures you would need to become more cyber resilient.

The webinar will take place on the platform Interactio, which offers the possibility of following the event in seven languages, namely English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, and Romanian. There will be space for 750 participants. While we will aim to have registration on a first come, first served basis, we also seek to have a proper balance between EU and U.S. participants. All confirmed participants will receive a link to the meeting. All non-confirmed participants will be able to access the recording after the meeting. While the training will be recorded and made available via a link after the meeting, the discussion will not be recorded.

REGISTER

We would like to kindly invite you to take part in a survey to hear from you which digital challenges are most relevant. This will be used to plan further trainings/listening sessions.

For any question or information, feel free to send us an e-mail at TTC-WG9@ec.europa.eu and/or engage on Futurium.