Commission welcomes the Women4Cyber initiative and launches progamme to detect bugs in software used by all EU institutions

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Today, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, Mariya Gabriel, is kicking-off the Women4Cyber initiative in Brussels, which was launched by the European Cyber Security Organisation (ECSO) in November last year.

It aims to increase the involvement of women in the development and promotion of European cybersecurity. Commissioner Gabriel says: “Women have so much to bring to the table and their talents and expertise need to be recognised. Cybersecurity will become much more important in our digital future and we should make use of their potential. Women remain underrepresented in the cybersecurity field. This is why I welcome this initiative and wish it all success. It is important that this initiative delivers concrete outcomes for the inclusion and career advancement of women in the cybersecurity sector in Europe.” ECSO has invited a number of top European female leaders from the cybersecurity field, including from the European Commission, to become the founding members of the initiative. In 2018 Commissioner Gabriel has outlined a number of Commission actions to increase women’s participation in the overall digital sector. Tomorrow, the Commission will also launch a special EU bug bounties programme for individuals discovering vulnerabilities in selected open source software programmes used by all EU institutions. Awards range from €3,000 to €25,000. This programme is a key component of EU-FOSSA 2 (Free and Open Source Software Auditing), a project financed by the European Parliament and implemented by the European Commission to make open source software used by the EU institutions more secure. Both the Women4Cyber initiative and the Commission’s programme to report bugs are also in line with the latest concrete measures EU has taken to enhance EU’s cybersecurity.

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