The European Council has adopted the ‘cyber solidarity act’, which aims to strengthen the EU’s capabilities to detect, prepare for, and respond to cybersecurity threats and incidents.
Main elements of the cyber solidarity act
The new law establishes EU capabilities to make Europe more resilient to cyber threats, while strengthening cooperation mechanisms. One of the key areas that it enables is the establishment of a ‘cyber security alert system’, a pan-European infrastructure composed of national and cross-border cyber hubs across the EU.
The new regulation also provides for the creation of a cybersecurity emergency mechanism to increase preparedness and enhance incident response capabilities in the EU. This will support:
- Preparedness actions, including testing entities in highly critical sectors (healthcare, transport, energy, etc.) for potential vulnerabilities, based on common risk scenarios and methodologies,
- A new EU cybersecurity reserve consisting of incident response services from the private sector ready to intervene at the request of a member state or EU institutions, bodies, and agencies, as well as associated third countries, in case of a significant or large-scale cybersecurity incident,
- Technical mutual assistance.
The cyber solidarity act also establishes an incident review mechanism to assess the effectiveness of actions under the cyber emergency mechanism and the use of the cyber security reserve.
Next steps
Following signature by the presidents of the European Council and of the European Parliament, the cyber solidarity act will be published in the EU’s official journal in the coming weeks and will enter into force 20 days after this publication.
Source: https://www.consilium.europa.eu
