CYBER+ALT ‘Agħżel Li Tipproteġi’: The SMEs Cybersecurity Grant Scheme is back
Back in June 2023, MITA launched the SME Cybersecurity Grant Scheme, CYBER+ALT ‘Agħżel Li Tipproteġi’ through its National Cybersecurity Coordination Centre for Malta (MITA-NCC).
Together with the Ministry for the Economy, Enterprise and Strategic Projects and Tech.mt, MITA-NCC reopened the Scheme on 20 February 2024 to support SMEs in financing projects related to cybersecurity. With a total budget of two million euro, the programme is co-funded by the European Union under the Digital Europe Programme, whereby €1,000,000 are EU funds and €1,000,000 are National funds. The scheme is being managed on a demanddriven basis.
Accordingly, MITA-NCC has issued five more public open calls (open rolling-calls) for interested eligible parties to submit their applications, cut-off dates being 14th April 2024, 28th April 2024, 12th May 2024, 26th May 2024, and 16th June 2024. Grants shall be awarded on a first come, first served basis, subject to budget availability.
The aid intensity applied is 80%, whereby the maximum grant that an SME can benefit from amounts to €60,000. The investment project proposal must include a comprehensive budget breakdown that amounts to at least €20,000 in total in order to be eligible for funding. Eligible projects will receive a pre-financing aid of 20% and the remaining 80% will be reimbursed upon full completion of the project. All projects must be implemented by not later than 30 September 2024.
“Such an investment should result in the SME advancing the status of its existing cybersecurity capacity through the implementation of new solutions focused on at least one of the five investment areas: vulnerability management, identity and access management, endto-end data protection, threat detection and response, and enhanced cloud-based platform security. For each, eligible costs include cybersecurity solutions; hardware; subscriptions, license fees and managed services; staff training; and implementation,” MITA-NCC said.
For further information please visit our dedicated website – ncc-mita.gov.mt. Applications can only be submitted online through the dedicated NCC Funding Application Portal accessible from nccfunding.gov.mt.
Together with Tech.mt, MITA will be holding an information session on the Scheme on Wednesday 6th March at the Malta Business Register (MBR) in Żejtun. More details to register can be found on the NCCMITA website; ncc-mita.gov.mt/events/information-session-cyberalt-grantscheme/
The NCC-MT is collaborating with Servizzi Ewropej f ’Malta (SEM) to assist interested applicants as needed, including assistance to draft or review their application form. SEM are reachable by email - info.sem@gov.mt or telephone line - +356 27797300, whilst the NCC-MT can be reached on the email address ncc.mita@gov.mt.