On Tuesday, July 5, the European Commission signed an agreement that states members will start to pool together a sum of €450 million to invest in the research of cybersecurity problems. The money will go to businesses, universities and other researchers to develop solutions to cybersecurity problems. It is expected that this money will act as a seed leading to, “private source…investing in cybersecurity ‘three times more’ than the initial €450 million in public contributions, for a total of up to €1.8 billion in new investment by 2020.”
The main focus of this investment is to help improve areas like securing identities online, training workers on best practices and improving the protection of the cloud. This is a great place for money to be invested because it is estimated that billions of Euros in damages to small businesses occur every year. It is important that the member states pool their knowledge of cybersecurity together and are willing to cooperate with one another in order to strengthen their security as a whole.