Mastercard announces its first European Cyber Resilience Centre. The facility will serve as a single cybersecurity hub for the region.

Mastercard is launching an interim centre this spring, with the official facility expected to open in 2021.

Mastercard announced it is developing its first European Cyber Resilience Centre, a state-of-the-art cyber and security centre in Europe that will drive collaboration between both public and private sectors, as well as regulatory bodies to further support enterprise resilience in the region.

Located in Waterloo, Belgium at Mastercard’s European Headquarters, the centre is the first of its kind that the company has invested in outside of North America.

„The new centre highlights Mastercard’s ongoing commitment to addressing threats faced by the European payments ecosystem, including financial institutions and fintechs. The facility will serve as a single cybersecurity hub for the region, bringing together a diverse pool of talent from across Mastercard’s global community.”, according to the press release.

Working with various national cyber intelligence centres, industry groups, law enforcement agencies and central banks across Europe – ECRB, ECCFI, Europol, FS-ISAC, INTERPOL, NBB, and the UK’s NCA and NCSC [1] – Mastercard’s European Cyber Resilience Centre will help drive better prevention and mitigation practices against international cybercrime and wider security threats. The centre will bring together both cyber and physical security experts.

“Financial services will always be at the top of the target list for attackers due to the vast pool of customer data and credentials under our responsibility,” said Javier Perez, President Europe at Mastercard. “Our European Cyber Resilience Centre improves collaboration amongst key organisations, helping to ensure businesses and individuals feel secure when sharing information online.”

The Cyber Resilience Centre will drastically shorten the lines of communication amongst internal Mastercard teams and externally with customers, partners and stakeholders. This will improve response time and effectiveness during global events, natural disasters, service and security incidents and ensure compliance with privacy laws globally.

For example, the centre will enable Mastercard to work closely with law enforcement agencies and customers in the region to accelerate intelligence sharing and lead a joint response to cybercrime. The Waterloo-based facility will also help to deepen knowledge and best practice sharing amongst Europe’s top law enforcement agencies and policy makers.

“The security and privacy of our customers’ data is paramount. Fraudsters and hackers know no borders or nationalities, so threats can strike from every corner of the world. Only a joint effort that involves all parties will be able to place Europe on the frontline of enterprise resilience,” said Perez. “This new centre will synchronize our global resources and partners to constantly seek and adopt the best practices for us and our customer network.”

[1] ECRB (Euro Cyber Resilience Board Chaired by the ECB – European Central Bank), ECCFI (European Cyber Crime and Fraud Investigators), FS-ISAC (Financial Services Information and Analysis Center), NBB (National Bank of Belgium), NCA (National Crime Agency) and NCSC (National Cyber Security Center)