Building European Cybersecurity Ecosystems: Lessons from the Past

Abstract

The European Commission proposed to set up the European Cybersecurity Competence Centre (ECCC), together with the Network of National Coordination Centres (NCCs), and Competence Community (CC), which together can be considered as a specific type of a multi-organisational structure or ecosystem aiming at strengthening cybersecurity community capacities. The challenge here is to identify commonly found issues to be solved, as well as decide on governance of new ecosystem, while using "lessons learned" from similar structures, both from the past EU cybersecurity initiatives, as well as from the other IT areas. In this paper we give such an overview of similar initiatives, such as cybersecurity communities, forums, innovation hubs, or public private partnerships. We conclude this part with an overview of lessons learned, before bringing forth concrete activities and results produced by four EU pilot projects to build a cybersecurity ecosystem. Then we postulate ways in which these can be extended to the benefit of the ECCC/NCC/CC ecosystem approach by the EU, and that could be considered for the future governance model and strategic directions.