Cyber attacks have not spared Spain.Last March, forexample,SEPE, the Spanish public employment service, was the victim of an attack via the Ryuk ransomware. In order to strengthen Spain’s cyber security capabilities, the government has announced a plan worth 450 million euros over three years.

An investment to promote cybersecurity

Spain has a cybersecurity industry with over 20 years of experience. The sector represents more than 1,600 companies invoicing 1,300 million euros per year and hopes to grow by 15% per year. The Spanish government has therefore highlighted cybersecurity as a priority area in its Agenda 2025, which focuses on the country’s recovery, acceleration in digital, transformation and resilience. The new programme presented has a budget of 450 million euros.

It will focus on promoting entrepreneurship, supporting R&D&I in cybersecurity, acceleration programmes for the growth of start-ups, promoting internationalisation or identifying and developing cybersecurity talent. Carme Artigas, Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence, said during her visit to the Spanish National Cybersecurity Institute (INCIBE) that it is fundamental to strengthen the cybersecurity knowledge of SMEs and citizens, to promote the cybersecurity ecosystem and to consolidate Spain as an international player in this field.

This announcement has obviously been positively received by the sector, but has also left many important questions unanswered, especially regarding the distribution of the funds. SMEs and start-ups in the sector hope to benefit from it and not to have the subsidies and aids attributed in great majority only to the giants of the sector.

“Academia Hacker”: a first edition from May 3 to June 25

One of the axes of the plan for cybersecurity is training. Better prepare the future talents of tomorrow, this will be the objective of the brand new Academia Hacker, managed by INCIBE. The first edition of the “Academia Hacker” will take place from May 3 to June 25, 2021 in a 100% digital format. 400 teams composed of four to eight members will be able to participate, which could bring to 3200 participants, the total number of people who can benefit from this training.

The INCIBE Academia Hacker is a free training initiative created to promote cybersecurity learning. It begins with an initial team training phase in which the identification, recruitment and promotion of cybersecurity talent is sought, as well as technical skills training so that participants can develop their cybersecurity skills or abilities.

The first challenge takes the form of a story. Eight students from a high school decide to form a learning team to start practicing cybersecurity tasks. They have heard about an FCT on the Internet and are ready to learn by combining their studies. They then start receiving small assignments through the school newspaper and some teachers encourage more students to participate. The difficulty of the challenges increases and they have to solve tasks of different complexity. With legal help from the institute, which advises them to allow them to audit certain assets and work in teams, their goal is to be able to find out the identity of the people sending them these messages.

INCIBE, in charge of the development of initiatives and programs, and the ministry in charge of this subject, have announced that they are working on the content of these trainings. They should be able to provide details on the qualifications offered and the orientation of the courses later this month.

Translated from Espagne : le gouvernement investit 450 millions d’euros dans son programme national de formation à la cybersécurité