The Commission proposes to build a network of Security Operations Centres across the EU43, and to support the improvement of existing centres and the establishment of new ones. It will also support the training and skill development of staff operating these centres. It could commit, on the basis of a needs analysis conducted with relevant stakeholders and supported by the EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), over EUR 300 million to support publicprivate and cross-border cooperation in creating national and sectoral networks, involving also SMEs, based on appropriate governance, data sharing and security provisions. Member States are encouraged to co-invest in this project. The centres would then be able to more efficiently share and correlate the signals detected and create high-quality threat intelligence to be shared with ISACs and national authorities, and thus enabling a fuller situational awareness. The goal would be to connect, in phases, as many centres as possible across the EU to create collective knowledge and share best practices. Support will be made available to these centres to improve incident detection, analysis and response speeds through state-of-the-art AI and machine learning capabilities and complemented by supercomputing infrastructure developed in the EU by the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking44. Through sustained collaboration and cooperation, this network will provide timely warnings on cybersecurity incidents to authorities and all interested stakeholders, including the Joint Cyber Unit (see section 2.1). It will serve as a real cybersecurity shield for the EU, providing a solid mesh of watchtowers, able to detect potential threats before they can cause large-scale damage. 1.3 An ultra-secure communication infrastructure The European Union Governmental Satellite Communications45, a component of the Space Programme, will provide secure and cost-efficient space- based communication capabilities to ensure the security- and safety- critical missions and operations managed by the EU and its Member States, including national security actors and EU institutions bodies and agencies. Member States have committed to working together with the Commission towards the deployment of a secure quantum communication infrastructure (QCI) for Europe 46. The QCI will offer public authorities a brand new way to transmit confidential information using an ultra-secure form of encryption to shield against cyberattacks, built with European technology. It will have two main components: existing terrestrial fibre communication networks linking strategic sites at national and cross-border levels; and linked space satellites covering the whole EU, including its overseas territories47. This initiative to develop and 43 More detailed arrangements for governance, operation principles and funding of these Centres, and how they will complement existing structures such as Digital Innovation Hubs, will be developed. 44 https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/eurohpc-joint-undertaking 45 GOVSATCOM is a component of the Space Programme of the Union 46 The EuroQCI Declaration has been signed by most Member States and development and infrastructure deployment are to take place in 2021-2027, with funding from Horizon Europe and Digital Europe, and the European Space Agency, subject to appropriate governance arrangements; https://ec.europa.eu/digital-singlemarket/en/news/future-quantum-eu-countries-plan-ultra-secure-communication-network 47 The development of a space component is necessary to achieve long distance point-to-point connections (>1000 km) that ground-based infrastructure cannot support. By exploiting the properties of quantum mechanics, the QCI will initially enable parties to securely share random secret keys to be used to encrypt and decrypt messages. It will also incorporate the deployment of a testing and compliance infrastructure, for assessing the compliance of European quantum communication devices and systems with the QCI infrastructure 7