Prof André Xuereb, Ambassador of Malta for Digital Affairs, was one of the panellists during a high-level conference hosted virtually on 23rd June 2021 by the Embassy of Romania to Italy, Malta and San Marino.  The conference was also addressed by high-level speakers from Romania, Italy and NATO. 

The theme of Prof Xuereb’s speech was Strengthening Public-Private-Academia Partnership for Cyber Security.  Prof Xuereb spoke on how the Covid-19 pandemic has helped the digital world to infiltrate every corner of our lives practically overnight. Despite the difficulties that this sudden change brought, the full immersion into the digital world provided a lifeline for people and economies.

Concurrently, the shift to digital is revealing how important it is to protect the digital ecosystem from cyber criminals who, given the opportunity, have the capacity to disable critical infrastructure, manipulate opinions and hold corporations if not nations to ransom.

Prof Xuereb explained that academia, along with the public sector, are the cornerstones of any innovation ecosystem; how today’s societal challenges span beyond the borders of any one country and spread into other countries, and emphasised that international collaborative innovation, also involving the private sector, is now a necessity.  In this context, Malta is working with EU countries and other agencies to develop an ultra-secure communication system that would allow EU Governments to operate in a cyber secure environment.

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