Investment in R&D, key to increasing the competitiveness of cybersecurity SMEs

• S2 Grupo has participated today in the Conference on European Financing challenges and solutions for the security of major events organized by the Diputación de Castellón.
• The company annually allocates around 10% of its turnover to R&D+i projects.
• Miguel A. Juan, managing-partner of S2 Grupo, explained during his speech that digital transformation of society is not possible without taking cybersecurity into account and, in this sense, it is necessary to have national products in order to have technological independence from other countries like the USA.

Valencia, September 24, 2018.- The Valencian company S2 Grupo, specialized in cybersecurity and cyber-intelligence, has participated today in the "Conference on European Financing challenges and solutions for the security of major events" organized today by the Europe Direct Center of the Diputación de Castellón. At this meeting, S2 Grupo shared its experience in participating in European projects, such as Horizon 2020, which aims to promote safe European societies in a context of global changes and threats. "We must bear in mind that a digital transformation of society without taking cybersecurity into account is currently not unfeasible. For years we have been entering a new context that also involves new threats and, therefore, cybersecurity is essential for the optimal development of secure societies at a European level ", explained Miguel A. Juan, managing-partner of S2 Grupo. Alongside this, he stressed that the main benefits for an SME of participating in European development and innovation projects are:

• encouraging contact with research centers and with other companies that have an advanced level of innovation at a European level,
• helping to develop proprietary technology that makes the company more competitive,
• contributing to the maturity of the company, by opening its horizons and favoring the scope of action.

Despite this, the main difficulties to carry it out are to require:

• an effort by the organization to participate in international projects,
• an investment of resources for the submission of proposals that has a relatively low probability of success,
• a greater maturity of the professionals involved or the hiring of more suitable personnel for R&D.

S2 Grupo: R&D+i, European project Sauron Miguel A. Juan, in this context, presented Sauron, the Horizonte2020 project in which S2 Grupo participates along with other European entities such as the ValenciaPort Foundation, the Polytechnic University of Valencia, the universities of Piraeus (Greece), Leuven (Belgium), and technology institutes and companies such as the Austrian Institute of Technology, Morpho (Safran) and Thales (France), ETRA, INNOVASEC (United Kingdom), and the ports of Valencia, Livorno (Italy), Koper (Slovenia), Piraeus (Greece) ) and the Noatum container terminal in Valencia. The objective of this project is to develop a "Situational Awareness Solution for the protection of ports in Europe", that is, the integration of both physical security systems and threats in cyberspace, protecting ports and their environment through the development of an advanced visualization system called "Hybrid Security Awareness". It is a multi-dimensional set capable of reducing current vulnerabilities and increasing the degree of prevention, as well as acting quickly in the face of a cyber-attack. In the last year, S2 Grupo invested 10% of its turnover in R&D+i projects, which are part of the European Horizon 2020 program to promote the development of its own technology in order to be technologically independent from the from USA and other countries. During 2017, the main projects that focused the activity of S2 Grupo in this area were CAIAC, Sadcip 4.0, Ipanema and Sauron, initiatives developed together with different Spanish and European organizations with the aim of increasing cybersecurity in different sectors as well as the improvement of the processes used so far. More information: prensa@s2grupo.es