The centre--which tackles threat intelligence, training and testing--is run by a government-backed outfit called Security Made in Lëtzebuerg (Smile).
C3 opened its doors during Luxembourg’s Cybersecurity Week--a series of informational and networking events held in October--when its offices were the venue for a conference entitled “Meet the cyber future”. (That particular event was organised by Luxinnovation, the state-backed economic promotion group.)
Before the talks on the country’s startup support programmes and a series of six-minute pitches from local and international entrepreneurs, Smile’s CEO had a chance to tout his seven-year-old outfit and the new C3.
The C3 “is based on three main areas of competences that we want to transfer, that we want to build, for you, or that we want to help that you can build up your people,” Pascal Steichen told the entrepreneurs. “The first one is a kind of observatory of threats.... to create a platform which can be used for decision taking. A bit like the weather forecast. Hopefully more precise than the weather forecast!”
It was important to create a local observatory, “because Luxembourg being a small country, in all the different global reports and documents that you can find on the internet, the figures for Luxembourg are always very difficult to interpret and read and not really accurate.”
“And the two other areas are testing and training, and both of these are based on a simulation platform. So, the idea is to [provide the] next level of training and really simulate an incident, a cyberattack or crisis even, customised for the company or for one entity, and get the people to play [out] this incident, go through this exercise, and by this train themselves to [deal] with that kind of situation. Or, test their existing policies and measures that are placed in the company”, and see how they stack up.
One big part of those services is “Room 42”, Steichen said, “which is basically a cyberattack simulation game, including physical and emotional elements. It’s kind of a 4D thing, because there are lights, there are video and audio aspects” to make it as realistic as possible.
C3 is a commercially-oriented venture, the security chief noted. Smile’s other services are considered public services, “so it’s free for everybody, but it’s limited,” Steichen pointed out. “C3 is not a public service; it’s a partnership with companies and together with companies we define new services and sell them together.”
In other words, “the C3 will have to finance itself in the coming years”.