A year and a half after it was completed, the Cyber Academia Innovation Hub (CAIH)located at the Military Academy, was inaugurated this Wednesday by the Minister of National Defense, Helena Carreiras.
The minister stressed that “this project in itself is a reason for us to mark another one decisive step in developing and consolidating national cyber defense and cybersecurity capabilities”, underlining that the CAIH is “oriented towards the pursuit of the public interest” and “has a clear mandate to promote training, education and research through a open space and inclusive, based on close interaction between civilian and military users”.
Helen Carreiras he also emphasized that “CAIH will make an important contribution to the development of dual-use solutions in building cyber defense capability”, also leaving assurances that “this project cannot and should not be seen in a competitive way”.
As DN already reported, although the CAIH is also willing to educate and train military personnel in cyber defense, the Ministry of Defense will Cyber Defense School from scratch, with the General Staff of the Armed Forces, with an estimated budget of around 13 million euros – a plan that began consideration in January 2020, but got back on track last May with the decision to open an international audience tender to be held, surprising for the companies that have been participating for four years.
CAIH in turn also had a had a process of “long and demanding creation”, as acknowledged by the minister: started in 2019, presented on 24 May at the CCB; the contract of project was signed on September 18, 2019; per decision of 5 March 2021 by the then minister, João Gomes Cravinho, the workgroup (GT) for project execution; O contract for the work was signed on April 28, 20201; at the end of this year works were completed; and on February 9, 2022, Cravinho visited the facilities, an event where, like this Wednesdayhad the Director General of National Defense Resources, Vasco Hilarioalso as a speaker.
At the time of that “pre-debut” it was expected that the CAIH would will achieve its Initial Operational Capability (IOC) in 2022with the participation of 10 entities that joined the first call for participants”.
But until April 17, date of the DN news, it was practically abandoned and some companies that had equipped and mobilized CAIH had even begun to withdraw some equipment.
But three days later, on April 20, 2023, the Council of Ministers approved the creation of CAIHby decree-law, which is finally inaugurated on 24 May.
CAIH is associated with European defense projects and has as one of its objectives “to promote education, training and exercises for the development of human resources skills related to cybersecurity and cyberdefence, strengthening resilience and national response to emerging threats occur in and from cyberspace”.
Source: DN
