Digital FlashUP: Cyber on 20 October

Two dates to put in the diary now

Monaco's Digital FlashUP programme has published its autumn 2026 line-up, and two sessions matter for any business owner in the Principality who does not have an IT department to lean on.

The first is "Maîtriser les fondamentaux de la cybersécurité" on Tuesday 20 October 2026, from 08:00 to 09:15 at the Novotel Monte-Carlo (16 boulevard Princesse Charlotte). It runs as a hybrid — in the room over breakfast, or by webinar — and registration is already open through the MonEntreprise agenda.

The second is "Moving to Cloud: sécuriser, optimiser et accélérer votre transformation", starting 12 November 2026 at the same venue. Registration for that one is not yet open, and the listing runs through to 30 March 2027, which suggests a repeated or multi-part format rather than a single morning. Check the agenda closer to the date for the exact schedule.

Both are short, informal and led by practitioners. That is the point of the programme — and also its limitation, which is why this article is about how to turn a 45-minute session into something that actually changes on Monday morning.

What Digital FlashUP is, in one paragraph

Digital FlashUP is run by Extended Monaco Entreprises (EME), the Prince's Government programme for business digitalisation, in partnership with the Monaco Business Office. Launched in July 2025, it replaced the longer training formats with 45-minute morning sessions led by local practitioners: coffee at 08:00, talk at 08:30, questions over a second coffee. Since 2021, the wider EME programme reports having supported around 700 companies and trained some 4,000 professionals in digital skills.

For 2026 the government said artificial intelligence would take centre stage, with the FlashLearn AI e-learning path and hands-on Digital LabImpact workshops. Cybersecurity, e-commerce and cloud remained on the calendar — and the autumn programme is where those return.

The 20 October session: what to expect

The official description is deliberately foundational: current threats, the attack techniques businesses see most often, and the protective practices that work — illustrated with real cases, technical demonstrations and discussion. Attendees should leave able to name their main risks and knowing a few simple tools to put in place.

If you already have a security policy, a managed IT provider and multi-factor authentication everywhere, this session is not for you. If you are a founder, an office manager, a boutique owner or a family office administrator who has been meaning to "look at that" for eighteen months, it is exactly for you.

The value is not the slides. It is being in a room with a Monaco-based practitioner and other local businesses who face the same threats — invoice fraud aimed at accounts teams, credential phishing through fake Microsoft 365 logins, ransomware arriving via a compromised supplier. Ask about what they are seeing locally this quarter. That is information you cannot get from a generic webinar.

Do this before 20 October, so your questions are sharp

Forty-five minutes evaporates if you arrive without context. Spend an hour beforehand on four checks — no technical knowledge required — and you will know which parts of the session apply to you.

1. List every login your business depends on. Email, bank, accounting, website admin, CRM, social accounts, MonGuichet. For each, note whether two-step verification is switched on. Any "no" is a question for the expert.

2. Ask who can reset your website. If your site went down or was defaced tonight, do you know who holds the hosting credentials, when the last backup ran, and whether the CMS and plugins are current? If the honest answer is "our former freelancer", that is a gap a website maintenance arrangement closes cheaply.

3. Check how payment-detail changes are verified. The most costly attack on small Monaco businesses is not technical at all: an email that looks like a supplier asking to update their bank details. Do you have a rule that such changes are confirmed by phone on a known number? If not, write one down today.

4. Know your legal obligations on breaches. Under Law No. 1.565 of 3 December 2024, a personal data breach may have to be notified to the APDP within a short deadline, and the authority has said that since the start of 2026 it has seen breach notifications rise noticeably. Cybersecurity and APDP data protection compliance are now the same conversation — if you are unsure how the notification duty applies to your business, ask the session, then verify with a professional.

The November cloud session: the follow-on question

"Moving to Cloud" is the natural next step, and its title — secure, optimise and accelerate — tells you the framing. The 2026 conversation in Monaco is no longer "should we use the cloud" but "which cloud, hosted where, under whose law, and can we leave if we need to".

Three questions worth bringing to that session:

• Sovereignty. Monaco has invested in sovereign cloud infrastructure, and for some categories of data — health, financial, anything the APDP would consider sensitive — hosting location is a compliance decision, not just a technical one.
• Exit. Contracts signed in 2026 should be readable in 2028. Ask what happens to your data, and at what cost, if you change provider.
• The website. Your public-facing site is usually the first thing to move and the easiest to get wrong. A modern build on managed infrastructure, done through a proper web development process, removes an entire category of maintenance risk.

Funding the projects the sessions inspire

A recurring frustration with awareness formats is that they raise the question and leave you with the bill. Monaco is unusual in having an answer: the Fonds Bleu can cover up to 70% of the cost of approved digitalisation projects for eligible Monaco businesses, and a security overhaul, a website rebuild or a cloud migration are the kind of projects it exists for.

The practical sequence is: attend the session, list the gaps, scope a project with a local provider, then apply. We have written a guide to Fonds Bleu-subsidised projects covering eligibility and how the application process works in practice.

Should you go?

Yes, if any of these is true: you handle client payment data, you run an online shop, you employ people who receive supplier invoices by email, or you could not say today when your website was last backed up. Book the 20 October slot through the MonEntreprise agenda, do the four checks above, and turn up with questions. Then watch for the November cloud registration opening.

If you would rather not wait for a breakfast to find out where you stand, we run short security and maintenance reviews for Monaco websites and digital setups — practical, priced for small businesses, and designed to plug straight into a Fonds Bleu application. Get in touch and we will tell you what we would look at first.