The German cyber agency continues to fail to meet its own standards: it has too few employees. At the end of last year, the number of employees should grow to 100, as a spokeswoman said at the time. The number of employees is currently 27, the spokeswoman said. The new target: by the end of 2022, the team should grow to 75 employees. The overriding goal is “still a final number of 100 employees”.
In the coming year, the federal authority is also planning to move to a larger property in Halle, said the spokeswoman. Like the previous one, this is also intended as a temporary solution until “the final location is decided by politicians”. The Halle location has not yet proven to be a disadvantage. “Rather the opposite is the case: a good half of the employees come from the Halle / Leipzig region,” emphasized the spokeswoman.
First research projects
The awarding of research projects is now also slowly getting started. In December the agency announced that it had awarded its first research project. The cyber agency is currently developing a research strategy that should be completed in the first quarter of 2022 at the latest, the spokeswoman said. The aim is to have many interlinked projects that follow a larger strategy.
The agency started its work in autumn 2020. One of the goals of the federal institution is to initiate and finance research projects that will make Germany’s cyber security stronger and more sovereign, said a spokeswoman. But the start has been jerky so far: Quite a few employees have already left their posts, including Research Director Christoph Igel. “This is nothing unusual and we respect the decision of all employees who decide in this situation to reorient themselves professionally,” said a spokeswoman about the departures.
(anw)