COcyber runs a series of Focus Groups and Interviews To Collect Stakeholder Inputs for the Needs Assessment

Cybersecurity plays a vital role in shaping Europe's digital future, and the COcyber project is dedicated to building a resilient cybersecurity ecosystem by strengthening collaboration between civilian and defence sectors. This two-year project aims to create a strong foundation for enhancing Europe’s strategic autonomy in cybersecurity.

As one of the first steps, since November 2024, COcyber has run its first public consultation dedicated to needs assessment about fostering cooperation for improved digital safety and preparedness for cybersecurity threads across Europe.  Our project has exchanged with cybersecurity leaders participating to dedicated focus groups and interview sessions. These needs-gathering sessions, hosted by our partner, ULB Solvay Business School, aim to refine strategies for structured collaboration. The global aim of the needs assessment phase seeks to capture expert insights to inform COcyber’s ongoing efforts and to be able to propose more adequate activities that are in line with the reality of the cybersecurity sector.

                                               The COcyber research team leading the needs assessment process. 

The needs assessment process was started with a comprehensive literature review during which our researchers identified 16 domains for synergies in the field of cybersecurity.  All needs assessment sessions with the engaged experts start with a brief overview of the COcyber objectives, then guide the participants to the discussion path to share with the results of the literature review and to discuss in depth how to foster synergies, but without influencing their opinions.

The first focus group was hosted on December 9th, gathering seven high-level professionals leading cybersecurity-related topics within the industry organisations. On the same day, a second session was hosted for SME representatives, gathering three participants from European SMEs based in Greece, Slovakia and Germany.

More focus groups will be hosted in the coming days and weeks, dedicated to gathering the requirements from European regulators, notably officers from the European Commission, as well as from other related European initiatives working to foster collaboration for digital safety, and notably the ECYBridge Project. 

In parallel, ULB Solvay Business School is conducting one-to-one interviews with top-notch experts from European digital organisations managing cybersecurity topics on the executive level. Together with the data gathered from the focus groups series, this data will be analysed and published under a dedicated public report entitled “Needs assessment report for improved participants and collaboration between cybersecurity and defence spheres” (deliverable 2.1 due in March 2025), and the results will feed the COcyber activities ensuring that these fit the needs and requirements of the target stakeholders. 

Professor Georges Ataya mentioned his delight with the results of those two first Focus Group consultations, saying: 

“The feedback we collected from those discussions confirmed most of the literature research effort our team conducted. Up to sixteen domains of synergy between Military and Civilian were reported and we shall address the relevance of each of those in the coming weeks.”

Join our activities for cooperation for better digital safety, and register now to our community via cocyber.eu!