The Secretary for Telecommunications and Digital Transformation, Sergi Marcén, the Director of the Catalan Cybersecurity Agency, Tomàs Roy, and the President and CEO of the Global Cyber Alliance (GCA), Phil Reitinger, met in San Francisco to sign a memorandum of understanding that formalises the Agency’s membership of this non-profit organisation that works to reduce the impact of cyber risk on a global scale. With this agreement, the Agency will have access to two collaborative data-sharing projects currently coordinated by the GCA: AIDE and Domain Trust, for IoT security and domain abuse, respectively.

The Secretary for Telecommunications stated that “collaboration with all stakeholders is vital to protect people” and “the Catalan Government has initiated and accelerated measures to focus on improving digital services for citizens. Our adhesion to the GCA is an example of the many measures that we are carrying out and that we will continue to carry out in this area,” Marcén stressed.

“The agreement with the Catalan Cybersecurity Agency enhances our connection with a key partner and helps build a global community of actors working together to prevent cyber-attacks,” said Global Cyber Alliance President and CEO Phil Reitinger, who explained that “our projects can be a valuable resource to further the work of the Catalan Cybersecurity Agency and an opportunity to strengthen its international reach. In this way, these organisations help us to get to the core of the ecosystem they protect.”

For his part, Tomàs Roy noted that “this partnership is an opportunity to promote tools that make the digital world a safer place, especially for those who are not so well protected. It will therefore allow us to include everyone and actively participate in building a digital world where respect for digital rights allows people to enjoy all aspects of digital life.”

The Automated IoT Defence Ecosystem (AIDE) project includes a massive data platform with information on attacks and malicious behaviour against electronic Internet of Things (IoT) devices that is constantly fed by a network of sensors located around the world. This information will enable the Agency to analyse trends, develop and implement algorithms to identify new threats in the cybersecurity sector, explore vulnerabilities and implement policies to improve both resilience in IoT environments and the protection of smart cities.

For its part, the Domain Trust project functions as a community of action and an information-sharing platform that provides users with data on malicious domains which enable malware distribution, the sending of phishing emails, credential phishing and command-and-control attacks using infected devices.