Press Release – 5th June 2023 – MITA Data Centre, St. Venera
A scheme has been announced to help businesses have adequate cybersecurity in place.
CYBER+ALT ‘Agħżel li Tipproteġi’ is a scheme co-financed by the European Union and local funds with the aim of helping small and medium businesses have adequate cybersecurity in place.
This was announced by the Minister for the Economy, European Funds and Lands Silvio Schembri and the Parliamentary Secretary for European Funds, Chris Bonett.
This scheme has a total budget of €2,000,000, co-financed by the European Union under the Digital Europe Program, where €1,000,000 are EU funds and €1,000,000 are National funds. The primary objective of this scheme is that we support SMEs so that through the finances we give them, they can carry out projects to strengthen their cybersecurity.
It is predicted that if each beneficiary consumes the maximum allowable amount of €60,000 through the scheme, around 33 SMEs will benefit from this scheme, thus elevating their situation in cybersecurity.
The Minister for the Economy, European Funds and Lands, Silvio Schembri said that in the era of digitization we are currently living in, while it is important that not only our businesses have an online presence, they must also ensure that they are protected in an adequate way.
“Last November we launched our policy that will lead us to excellence in the digital and technological field, ‘Malta Diġital’, having our businesses armed is fundamental to achieving our goals,” said Minister Silvio Schembri.
The Honorable Parliamentarian Chris Bonett, gave his intervention. During his address, the Parliamentary Secretary Chris Bonett emphasized how the ambition of this government is to have a more resilient and modern country, and in order to do so the enterprises that invest in modernizing their systems must be secure and digital.
“Without this digital security investment in our businesses will remain vulnerable to attacks that can undermine their credibility and endanger the personal information of the clients it serves. Therefore cybersecurity today is not just technical words, but in a more digital country it must become a more central part of the strategy of Maltese enterprises.” said Dr. Bonnet
He added that the CYBER+ALT scheme ‘Agħżel li Tipproteġi’ will be directly investing 2 million euros in the future of our country’s economy where €1,000,000 of them are European funds, and it is predicted that around 30 enterprises will benefit from it.
Parliamentary Secretary Chris Bonett closed by explaining how this scheme is an investment in the resilience of the Maltese economy which will remain central in the vision of these European funds.
The CEO of MITA, Engineer Emanuel Darmanin said that MITA has a critical role in protecting data and digital systems in the public sector. With a mandate that the Maltese Government gave us, the role of the National Cybersecurity Coordination Center (NCC-MT), we now also have the responsibility to build a community on a national level when it comes to cybersecurity and to get EU funds that are distributed to local organizations for them to strengthen their cybersecurity profile.
Small and medium businesses can visit the NCC-MT website https://ncc-mita.gov.mt/cyber-alt to apply for this scheme.