After decades of digitalization spreading into every area of our lives, with very little attention given to the aspects linked to cybersecurity, information technology (IT) had essentially become an “open bar” for cybercriminals. For a few years, with a marked degradation during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the news has been rife with reports of privacy breaches and cyberattacks (mainly ransomware) on companies and institutions, especially local governments and hospitals. In addition, cyberwarfare has been making the news too, especially in relation to the conflict in Ukraine. Thus, the era of blissful ignorance and naiveté has ended. Although the wake-up call was abrupt, knowledge of these issues has expanded, and governments and to some extent businesses have taken first moves to enhance the cybersecurity frontline. However, cybersecurity is a highly competitive race between nations, between defenders and attackers, with enormous stakes. The pervasiveness of IT provides a broad attack surface, and attacks can be economically devastating, but they can also have tangible or even lethal repercussions on the physical world. Despite several highly acclaimed advancements (e.g. the General Data Protection Regulation-GDPR), the EU still has a great deal of work to do in this regard, particularly to maintain its sovereignty and become a leader in the global competition. Cybersecurity is indeed a matter of both economic leadership and national sovereignty. This chapter contains two contributions. • “From cybercrime to cyberwarfare, nobody can overlook cybersecurity any more” This article describes the current state of IT system cybersecurity, showing how vulnerable systems are to the numerous dangers and challenges posed by cybercrime and cyberwarfare. It goes on to present a few concrete ways to remedy the issue, whether by technical, legal, sociological, or political means. Indeed, although the EU has weaknesses, linked to its extremely high reliance on IT systems, it also has the potential to become a world leader in cybersecurity, owing to both its strong technical culture and its regulatory capabilities. • “Is privacy possible in a digital world?” Over the last few years, privacy has become a hot topic. However, this is in large part due to the fact that ever more data is being collected, not only by governments, but also by companies. It is often unclear for which purposes this data ends up being used; worse, it can even be leaked to third parties by attackers. Furthermore, even if this collected data would appear not to be sensitive in and of itself, sometimes sensitive information can be deduced from it. In this article, we present a summary of some of the ways in which data is gathered; how additional information can be inferred from it and how this is problematic; and how we can try to protect our privacy.