ENGINE- Cyber Security for European SME’s Erasmus Project

Project Title

ENGINE- Cyber Security for European SME’s

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Digital skills and cybersecurity are becoming e more and more relevant, as proved by the recent institutional focus on the area. This is a result not only of the technological development of the world, but also as a means to deal with the unemployment in the EU. The Tallinn Digital Summit of 2017 sent a strong message that spoke about the need of digital skills and learning: “To successfully build a Digital Europe, the EU needs labor markets and training/education systems fit for the digital age: there is a need to empower and enable people and to ensure that no one is left behind.” SMEs have often not realized the importance of the digital transformation for their businesses yet. For European enterprises to compete, grow and create jobs they must ensure that they have access to a large pool of people who can lead the high-tech innovation and transformation of their business. For all these reasons, the aim of the ENGINE project is to train entrepreneurs, employees of small and medium enterprises about cybersecurity and blockchain technologies to foster digital transformation of Europe. Indeed ENGINE will create a tailored made training considering the target group needs. The ENGINE training course will be practical, short and concise with a short learning cycle focused on increasing the level of awareness of cyber attack and market opportunities through blockchain tech. It will focus to improve the capacity of people and companies to prevent, protect and react in front of cyberattacks and to contribute to create a safer digital Europe. Moreover, the training will transfer relevant knowledge and competences necessary to initiate and guide ICT-related innovation of SME’s in all sectors (e.g. blockchain).

The general objective of the proposed project is to increase the competitiveness of European SMEs giving them the skills they need to defend themselves against cyber attacks and boosting blockchain tech use in SMEs. Nowadays cyber risk management and assessment are considered as backbones of a secure IT environment, this project wants to improve cybersecurity management skills of SMEs by filling gaps in SMEs in partner countries and to provide a comprehensive guide to foster SMEs exploitation of blockchain and protection from cyber attack.

The general objectives will be:
• address the current shortage of people capable of leading the innovation needed to boost the competitiveness of European companies
• take advantage of innovation opportunities to make the best use of ICT delivering value to European SMEs
• strengthen entrepreneurial and digital skills to promote new digital jobs in Europe
As mentioned before ENGINE Project is targeted towards SMEs entrepreneurs, employees and VET providers and trainers.

The general objectives will lead to three specific objectives and so at three concrete results:
IO1: Development of a Training Course on cybersecurity and blockchain to increase the awareness of digital perils and the importance of adopting preventing measures in the working environment.
IO2: Creation of a Guideline on how implement cyber security and blockchain in SMEs to increase competitiveness and innovation
IO3: Creation of a Platform to transfer the knowledge to the target that will be available online and open sources so it will provide for everyone simple information to put in practice, in order to support SMEs employees to prevent cyber attacks.

Therefore, ENGINE project will develop training materials accessed via MOODLE platform, which enables SMEs to take cyber risks into account and deploy their cybersecurity activities into the risk management processes of the organization taking into account the international standards by making an assessment of this model on the basis of cross-regional and multi-cultural business domains. Thus it will be possible to mitigate cyber risks to an acceptable level in SMEs,. ENGINE will also support the exploitation of blockchain technologies as business opportunity for SMEs by demonstrating some viable business models and projecting concrete opportunities for SMEs.
The partnership is composed of 7 organisations from 5 different European countries. The Leader Partner will be DANITACOM The Italian Chamber of Commerce in Denmark, the other partners will be: DTU the Technical University of Denmark, Fondazione Luigi Clerici (it promote in Italy the empowerment process of the person at professional and at personal level by offering professional, cultural and social training), The Hive-FVB (an italian certified business incubator), BIC INNOBRIDGE – Bulgaria (its main goal is to support and implement entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives at all stages of development), Atlantis Engineering S.A. (Greek ICT SME) and Coopèration Bancaire pour l’Europe (Brussels-based European Economic Interest Grouping).

All project information and results will be available in openaccess on the website and learning platform which will be available for three years after the project

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 217750 Eur

Project Coordinator

Det dansk-italienske Handelskammer i Danmark & Country: DK

Project Partners

• ATLANTIS ENGINEERING AE
• FVB S.R.L
• FONDAZIONE LUIGI CLERICI
• DANMARKS TEKNISKE UNIVERSITET
• COOPERATION BANCAIRE POUR L’EUROPE
• Business Innovation Center Innobridge