Have you heard of ENISA? This is a European institution and it is called the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity. Its main office is in Chalandri, a suburb of Athens, Greece, and it plays an important role in protecting the cyber-infrastructure across Europe.
ENISA was established in 2004 and it is involved in drafting the EU public policies on cybersecurity as well as in building and boosting the resiliences of the EU infrastructure to cyberthreats. According to ENISA’s website, the agency is involved in seven types of activities: empowering communities, cyberpolicy, operational cooperation among EU member states and EU friends, capacy building, developing common approaches to tackle cybersecurity risks, foresight and sharing knowledge.
ENISA publishes regularly all sorts of documents for the use of cybersecurity professionals, public and private institutions, as well as for the use of EU citizens. For example, recently, it published two documents addressing the 12 typical skills any cybersecurity professional should have to do its job.
Although it is an institution focused on a topic that requires very specialized skills, ENISA is also actively involved in raising cyber awareness. On September 30, it lauched the European Cybersecurty Month (ECSM), which is meant to campaign to inform the EU citizens about the cybersecurity risks they are faced with and empower them to reduce cyber incidents. The focus ECSM 2022 was on phishing and ransomeware, two problems EU citizens and institutions faced heavily during the COVID-19 pandemic and before.
During ECSM 2022, ENISA awarded 3 prizes: one for the best infografic, one for the best teaching material and a third for the best video. The best teaching material award went to SafetInternet4Kids from Greece for Game treasure hunt for primary school. The best video award went to two creators, one from Slovenia (Darko wants to take his girlfriend on a trip) and another from Belgium (Passwords are a thing of the past. Protect your online accounts with two-factor-authentication).
ENISA is a key protection agency and it helps the European Union and its citizens to protect themselves in the digital environment. It is as important as EUROPOL or European Medicines Agency, but in a totally different area.
