The PSD filed a request on Tuesday for the Defense Minister and the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (CEMGFA) to be heard urgently in parliament about the “worrying delay” in establishing the cyber defense school.
In a request signed by the parliamentary leader of the PSD, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, and by the coordinator of the parliamentary group in the National Defense Commission, Jorge Paulo Oliveira, the Social Democrats write that “according to news published in the press”, namely in the Diário de Notícias “the creation of the Cyberdefense School will suffer a worrying delay” due to the fact that the General Staff of the Armed Forces (EMGFA) “has now decided to open an international public tender”.
“This decision is still surprising as it comes more than three years after the EMGFA started the consultation process with cybersecurity companies, still under the mandate of Admiral Silva Ribeiro, to establish a Cyberdefense School that protects national interests, in this fundamental area of Defense”reads in the text.
The Social Democrats say Defense Minister Helena Carreiras considers this area “a priority” for the government, but emphasize that the decision in question will affect the installation of the country’s cyber defense capabilities, “which are already under threat due to the low implementation rate of the budget for this sector, which was only 30% last year”.
In response to the DN, the EMGFA spokesperson – headed by General Nunes da Fonseca – states that “taking into account the nature of the object to be tendered and its value, it will be assumed, in the light of current competition principles, publicity and transparency, an international tendering procedure, namely limited tendering by prior qualification, under the conditions of the Public Procurement Code”.
This EMGFA decision, the filing says, “was a big surprise to the four companies who had already been called by the team from the previous CEMGFA who had been waiting since February” to receive the “invitation to submit proposals after some of them had spent the last three years involved in this project”.
The Social Democrats consider it “obvious that the delay in building this capacity in Defense” will eventually lead to “encouragement at the national and international level in the sector”, pointing out that “the dimension and consequences” of last year’s cyber-attacks on the EMGFA network.
In parallel with this process, the text continues, “the ‘Cyber Academia and Innovation Hub’ was built a year ago at the Army Military Academy to ‘promote education, training and exercises, research and innovation in cyberspace and, furthermore , to support the development of cybersecurity and cyber defense capabilities” — the creation of which was approved in the Council of Ministers on 20 April.
“While there seem to be those who claim that this space, which has not been used for over a year, could also be used as a cyber defense school, the ministry inexplicably believes that this cannot be done,” they add.
For the PSD “this situation is very worrying and could affect the credibility of the Portuguese State with its international partners and jeopardize the development of the plan in the field of Cyberdefense and as such it is important to know the dimension of this problem “.
The proposed law on military programming – which will be debated in parliament tomorrow – envisages a global investment amount of €5,570 million by 2034, and in cyber defense this will be “reinforced by 39%”, with the total allocated to reach 70 million.
Source: DN
