Google has already landed in Malaga. The new center of the American giant opened its doors on the Costa del Sol this Wednesday. It is the company’s third Google Safety Engineering Center (GSEC) in Europe after those in Munich (inaugurated in 2019) and Zurich (2021), but this is the first focused on cybersecurity and already serves as a reference for all of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “It is a place that will allow us to redouble our efforts to make the Internet a better and safer place,” explained Kent Walker, president of Global Affairs at Google, who hours before arriving in the capital of Malaga met with the President of the Government. , Pedro Sánchez. In the modern space, where 70 people already work, employees from VirusTotal, Google Cloud, Mandiant and Threat Analysis Group (TAG), divisions of the North American multinational, have been located. The idea is that this headquarters will also be a node for research, training and the creation of alliances with public and private institutions. In Spain, Google already has offices in Barcelona and Madrid, where there is also a center for entrepreneurs. Bilbao also receives the telecommunications cable installed by the company that connects with the United States and the United Kingdom.
The arrival in Malaga puts the icing on the cake of a process that started in 2004 with the birth of VirusTotal. It was Bernardo Quintero from Malaga, along with other engineers, who started this company. It was a service as simple as it was useful: a place to send a file suspected of carrying a virus to check it and get a second opinion. In 2009 he started giving money. He grew up and Quintero himself set the challenge that one day they would end up integrated into Google. He contacted them, they were interested, conversations started and three years later VirusTotal became the second Spanish company acquired by the technology company. They managed to maintain their headquarters in Malaga, then in a chalet. A consolidation process began there thanks to the numbers and tools developed by the local team, which over time encouraged Google managers to locate their new GSEC on the Costa del Sol. The idea arose in 2018, shortly after they found the ideal place in the former military government building, next to the Port of Malaga. The views convinced the Americans. They completely remodeled the building with an investment of more than three million euros. And this Wednesday it became reality. For Pedro Sánchez, it is a sign of “the investment attractiveness” of Spain. “It places us at the forefront in the digital and technological field,” he stressed on Twitter.
The sun that North Americans had been looking for in Malaga was found this Wednesday. A radiant day welcomed the officials who traveled to the capital of Malaga and the press from half of Europe. Around ten in the morning, shortly before the opening ribbon was cut, Bernardo Quintero himself walked around the terrace, going unnoticed among guests and the media. Jacketed, he asked to take a photo to immortalize the moment. “The show begins,” he said with a smile on his face, happy that the dream he had had become something so tangible for his land. “I wanted to do things for local development and Google encouraged me to do so,” he explained to EL PAIS a few days ago. In fact, the new center underpins Malaga’s technological commitment, whose growth has skyrocketed in recent years thanks to local and multinational companies that have decided to settle in the city in recent years.
“We are the Switzerland of cybersecurity”
“It is not an accident that we are here. Malaga is well recognized for having a vibrant hub of startups of engineering and technology,” said Fuencisla Clemores, general director of Google in Spain and Portugal, who also pointed out the great weight it has had in the decision that this is the home of VirusTotal. “They were the ones who started this journey in 2004 and already have millions of users,” said the person in charge. Today it is the leading threat information exchange platform under a collective collaboration formula. “We are like the Switzerland of cybersecurity, we are neutral and we help billions of people,” according to Quintero, who now holds the position of director of security engineering at the multinational and who celebrates the fact that the interior design of the building included the participation of Malaga companies such as Todobarro (with a huge wall covered in brick) or the artist PlayInColors, who has made two murals.
The new center will serve to promote the work carried out by the Malaga company since its inception. The 60 people that make up its staff already work in this space, which has also welcomed a dozen more colleagues from other services such as Google Cloud, Mandiant and Threat Analysis Group. In total, 70 workers – of which 80% are from Malaga – in facilities prepared for a hundred. These teams will combat cybersecurity threats and develop tools to improve the fight. “The challenge of cybersecurity requires international collaboration. And this center is the answer and our commitment to solving user problems,” insisted Phil Venables, director of Information Security at Google Cloud.
Google’s Malaga headquarters will also be a “collaboration space between experts, academics, companies and European governments in which to discuss good practices, share research and knowledge and, ultimately, achieve advances in security that are beneficial for everyone.” added Kent Walker, who met with the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, on Tuesday to discuss the challenges of digitalization and artificial intelligence. These are some of the aspects that will be developed in the new facilities, which also have several spaces designed for training. It is precisely one of the objectives that the original VirusTotal team has been developing for years thanks to the collaboration with the University of Malaga. The recent creation of a chair in cybersecurity and an incubator for startups in the sector is joined by the university expert course in cybersecurity, which is heading towards its sixth edition, and by collaboration with the research teams of the Malaga university itself.
A degree in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence has also been launched, a technology that has been given special relevance in the Malaga GSEC. In fact, a VirusTotal report made public this morning warns about how artificial intelligence helps identify malicious code “in a faster, more precise way and with utility for more people.” A tool that also closes the gap in the shortage of malware analysis experts, according to Google experts, who have also announced a $10 million program to train people in cybersecurity in collaboration with eight universities. from all over Europe.
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