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The main objective of the ECSCI cluster is to create synergies and foster emerging disruptive solutions to security issues via cross-projects collaboration and innovation. Research activities will focus on how to protect critical infrastructures and services, highlighting the different approaches between the clustered projects and establishing tight and productive connections with closely related and complementary H2020 projects. To promote the activities of the cluster, ECSCI will organize international conferences, and national or international workshops, involving both policy makers, industry and academic, practitioners, and representatives from the European Commission.
ATLANTIS
Improved resilience of Critical Infrastructures against large scale transnational and systemic risks
Description:
Critical infrastructure sectors are of vital importance for the functioning of a society and economy – from energy and transportation to healthcare and food production. Their protection from all types of threats, including natural and synthetic, unintentional and with malicious intent, is top priority. In this context, the EU-funded project ATLANTIS is addressing resilience at the systemic level against major natural hazards and complex attacks that could potentially disrupt vital functions of the society. Bringing together 39 European partners with complementary roles and skills, ATLANTIS is improving the resilience and the protection capabilities of interconnected critical infrastructure exposed to evolving risks. It is also increasing resilience through novel, flexible, and customisable security measures and tools.
Project Type: Innovation Action
Project Duration: 3 years (October 2022 – September 2025)
CTC
Cut The Cord
Description:
The Cut The Cord – CTC (GA 101036276) project is an EU-ISF-Police funded project with 30 months duration that kicked off in November 2021. Its consortium consists of 10 partners from across Europe. It aims at preventing and disrupting terrorism financing through a public-private cooperation enhancement, capacity building and preparedness of the end-users regarding Countering Terrorism Financing. CTC will provide technical solutions based on Artificial Intelligence tools for data acquisition and analysis of financial transactions (e.g., cryptocurrency transactions). To achieve the above objectives and in order to maximize the applicability and usability of CTC, the project aspires to form a strong Stakeholder Community, with members from key group audiences such as Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs), Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs), Financial Authorities and payment Services, Cryptocurrency Anti Money Laundering Organisations and Policy Makers and more.
Project Type: EU-ISF-Police
Project Duration: 3.5 years (November 2021 – April 2024)
EITHOS
European Identity THeft Observatory System
Description:
EITHOS will develop a novel Identity Theft Observatory System, empowering European citizens, Law Enforcements Agencies (LEAs), and policy makers to further contribute to the prevention, detection, and investigation of identity theft related crime. It will provide a common gateway for identity theft information and intelligence in Europe, built on top of a modern technological back end, based on two pillars:
The proposed system will provide easy access to information and intelligence about previous and current identity theft related trends (such as the methods that fraudsters follow to steal information, personal data protection, or the ways that victims can be supported) through its front end, while offering a cutting-edge AI-based technological toolkit via its back end. Additionally, the project will analyse the societal impact of identity theft, as well as the legal framework under which the utilisation of AI remote technologies and e-evidence exchange can be achieved. Focusing on educating civil society and addressing the obstacles that hinder LEAs to efficiently fight identity theft, EITHOS differentiates from previous projects and other market solutions which often concentrate on digital identity management and secure transactions.
Project Type: Research & Innovation Action
Project Duration: 3 years (October 2022 – September 2025)
EU-HYBNET
Empowering a Pan-European Network to Counter Hybrid Threats
Description:
EU-HYBNET (Empowering a Pan-European Network to Counter Hybrid Threats) is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No883054. The project aims at enriching the existing European networks countering hybrid threats and ensuring long term sustainability. This will be achieved by defining the common requirements of European practitioners’ and other relevant actors in the field of hybrid threats. Ultimately, this can fill knowledge gaps, deal with performance needs, and enhance capabilities or research, innovation and training endeavours concerning hybrid threats. EU-HYBNET monitors developments in research and innovation activities as applied to hybrid threats; so to indicate priorities for innovation uptake and industrialization and to determine priorities for standardization for empowering the Pan-European network to effectively counter hybrid threats. EU-HYBNET establishes conditions for enhanced interactions with practitioners, industry, and academia for a meaningful dialogue and for increasing membership in the network. If you’re interested in joining the EU-HYBNET Network, please visit our website for more information.
Project Type: CSA
Project Duration: 5 years (1 May 2020 – 30 April 2025)
IRIS
Artificial Intelligence threat Reporting and Incident response System
Description:
As existing and emerging smart cities continue to expand their IoT and AI-enabled platforms, this introduces novel and complex dimensions to the threat intelligence landscape linked with identifying, responding and sharing data related to attack vectors, based on emerging IoT and AI technologies.
IRIS’s vision is to integrate and demonstrate a single platform addressed to Critical Infrastructure Operators and CERTs/CSIRTs for assessing, detecting, responding to and sharing information regarding threats & vulnerabilities of IoT and AI-driven ICT systems in smart cities. To achieve this, IRIS brings together experts in cybersecurity, IoT, AI explainability, threat intelligence, automated threat detection, response, and recovery.
IRIS aims to help European Critical Infrastructure Operators and CERTs/CSIRTs minimise the impact of cybersecurity and privacy risks and threats introduced by cyber-physical vulnerabilities in IoT platforms and adversarial attacks on AI-provisions and their learning/decision-making algorithms.
The IRIS platform was demonstrated and validated in 3 highly realistic digital environments with the engagement of 3 smart cities in Helsinki, Tallinn and Barcelona along with the involvement of national CERTs/CSIRTs, and cybersecurity authorities.
Project Type: Innovation Action
Project Duration: 3 years (September 2021 – August 2024)
KINAITICS
Cyber-kinetic attacks using Artificial Intelligence
Description:
The interconnection between Information Technologies and Operational Technologies is underway, with many impacts on the related cybersecurity of various application domains. For a long time, we have known that attacks or malfunctions in the cyber world can have critical impacts on the physical world, especially in critical infrastructures. Conversely, intentional perturbations of physical systems, through e.g. attacks on sensor measurements, can have disastrous consequences on digital control mechanisms, and thus on physical processes. In this interconnected cyber-physical world, the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) opens the door to various new kinds of attacks, and also offers numerous defence capabilities.
In the KINAITICS project, we aim at exploring the new attack opportunities offered by the introduction of AI-based control and perceptive systems, as well as those offered by combination of behavioural understanding of physical systems and cyber-attacks. On the defence side, we aim at offering an innovative spectrum of tools and methodologies, to combine behavioural monitoring and classical cybersecurity tools to protects against these new threats. Importantly, we also target innovative methodologies, which incorporate human factors and their uncertainties in the tools. This last point raises crucial challenges on trustworthy approaches, explanations provided, and how to deal with uncertainties in response decisions.
The project will also thoroughly assess the regulation of big data uses and provide guidelines for EU policy actions and cybersecurity experts’ responsible development, thanks to the implication of researchers specialised in legal and ethical aspects of ICT innovation. Our research will strive to counter AI attacks. The seven tools produced during the course of the project, as well as the cyber-defence platform, will significantly improve systems robustness, resilience and response, and will help Europe save 3-4 billion € yearly by 2030.
Project Type: Research & Innovation Action
Project Duration: 3 years (October 2022 – September 2025)
STARLIGHT
SusTainable Autonomy and Resilience for LEAs using AI aGainst High priority Threats
Description:
STARLIGHT empowers LEAs with automated, operational, and cyber-resilient investigation, intelligence, surveillance and control capabilities to tackle traditional and emergent (e.g., AI-powered) criminal activities, terrorism, cybercrime, and cyber-attacks, within and at the borders of the EU. The STARLIGHT approach aims at contributing to the establishment of a strong EU AI-based security industry, thus enhancing the EU’s strategic autonomy in the field of AI for LEAs.
To achieve this, STARLIGHT envisions a new sustainable community that works to build a cohesive and strategic landscape that delivers interoperable AI solutions that uphold ethical and societal values to tackle high priority threats for all LEAs across Europe. Cooperation between researchers and security practitioners will provide a driving force for needs and gap analysis, fast and effective uptake and adoption underpinned by an essential focus on aligning legal and ethical provisions, legislative frameworks, and fundamental rights.
STARLIGHT will ensure European LEAs lead the way in AI innovation, autonomy and resilience, addressing the challenges of now and the future, prioritising the safety and security of Europe for all.
Project Type: Innovation Action
Project Duration: 4 years (October 2021 – September 2025)
SUNRISE
Strategies and Technologies for United and Resilient Critical Infrastructures and Vital Services in Pandemic-Stricken Europe
Description:
Strengthening critical infrastructures through collaboration, strategy and technology. As Europe continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, its citizens and governments are looking ahead to futureproof society’s lifeline structures. The EU-funded SUNRISE project aims to ensure greater availability, reliability, and continuity of critical infrastructures in Europe including transport, energy, water, and healthcare. 41 partner organisations – including 18 public and private CI operators and authorities – are working together to develop a suite of novel technologies and solutions that will improve the resilience of these critical infrastructures against the impact of pandemics and other major risks.
Project Type: Innovation Action
Project Duration: 3 years (October 2022 – September 2025)
TESTUDO
auTonomous swarm of hEterogeneouS resources in infrasTructUre protection via threat preDictiOn and prevention
Description:
As its surroundings changes radically and climate conditions deteriorates, Europe and its Members adapt to these current challenges. To this end and in order to maximise their usability, the EC established a framework of a common policy (EU Security Market study) by categorizing potential technologies per security domain, including Critical Infrastructure (CI) Protection. This trend is indicative for the importance and significancy that the EC gives to these matters. Any potential disruption, either intentional as a terrorist attack or a natural disaster, may risk smooth operations of such structures that may have a severe impact on a local society and its daily activities or well-being. Current advancements in various technologies can be particularly beneficial in CI protection especially when they can provide a timely support without the necessity of a human in the loop. TESTUDO, aligned with the need of a holistic and autonomous security approach in CI protection domain and with the European Commission’s objectives, will utilize advanced unmanned vehicles along with existing equipment to deliver a highly mature platform for continuous monitoring even at harsh environments and remote territories. Tailored to the needs of the domain and targeting to maximize the platform’s autonomy capabilities, TESTUDO intends to incorporate state-of-the-art technologies for detection, prevention and prediction increasing their cognitive capabilities for different types of hazardous events. In addition, optimization techniques will identify the resources needed for the execution of high-level missions contributing to the total autonomy of the deployable system. A multidisciplinary group of technical innovators for AI-based models, CBRN, cyber-security detection, Digital twins and XAI along with the CI-related experts will collaborate to deliver an innovative action and solution to protect various CIs during a long operational period and completely autonomously.
Project Type: Research & Innovation Action
Project Duration: 3 years (October 2023 – September 2026)
EU-CIP
European Knowledge Hub and Policy Testbed for Critical Infrastructure Protection
Description:
Critical infrastructure protection is pivotal for the security of the EU. The EU-funded EU-CIP project will establish a novel pan-European knowledge network for Resilient Infrastructures to enable data-driven policies and advance Critical Infrastructure (CI) operators’ innovation capacity. EU-CIP relies on the European Cluster for Securing Critical infrastructures (ECSCI), which brings together 22 projects about CI Resilience. It aims to increase the capacity, organisation community, and achievements of the ECSCI cluster. Its final goal is the establishment of an EU-wide knowledge hub with advanced analytical and innovation support services to EU projects and other innovators in CI security and resilience.
Project Type: HORIZON Coordination and Support Actions
Project Duration: 3 years ( 1 October 2022 – 30 September 2025)
CyberSEAS
Cyber Securing Energy dAta Services
Description:
The move towards more agile, connected, intelligent and data-driven energy systems, and their interconnection with our day-to-day lives, means that there is a major increase in cyber exposure of energy systems leading to major safety and privacy incidents. The EU-funded CyberSEAS project improves the resilience of energy supply chains by protecting them from disruptions generated by complex attack scenarios. CyberSEAS delivers an open and extendable ecosystem of 30 customisable security solutions providing effective support for key activities, such as risk assessment; interaction with end devices; secure development and deployment; real-time security monitoring; skills improvement and awareness; and certification, governance and cooperation. CyberSEAS solutions will be validated through experimental campaigns consisting of numerous attack scenarios.
Project Type: IA – Innovation action
Project Duration: 3 years ( 1 October 2021 – 30 September 2024)
eFORT
Establishment of a FramewORk for Transforming current EPES into a more resilient, reliable and secure system all over its value chain
Description:
Electrical power and energy systems are undergoing an unprecedented transformation, demanding urgent upgrades to make them more reliable, resilient and secure. The EU-funded eFORT project will work towards upgrading the energy grid without affecting the security of supply. Moreover, it will increase reliability and resiliency against extreme weather events, man-made hazards and equipment failures. The project will implement a set of solutions, including an interoperable intelligent platform that will establish a common foundation for grid characterisation and vulnerability overseeing. It will also gather information from smart grid components and apply high-performance algorithms. At the same time, other developments based on cutting-edge technologies (cryptochips, blockchain, AI) will reinforce the robustness of the grid infrastructure.
Project Type: IA – Innovation action
Project Duration: 4 years (1 September 2022 – 31 August 2026)
MobiSpaces
New data spaces for green mobility
Description:
The data volumes produced in secure and trustworthy digital infrastructures are huge. But they are meaningless without efficient data governance. Thus, the exploitation of mobility data (urban and maritime domains) has wide potential due to the emerging applications and the environmental footprint. In this context, the EU-funded MobiSpaces will develop an end-to-end mobility-aware and mobility-optimised data governance platform with key differentiating factors. Specifically, it will design the extraction of actionable insights from ubiquitous mobile sensor data and IoT devices in a decentralised way. Five mobility use cases – from smart public transport services in cities to vessel tracking – will demonstrate the impact of the project’s platform in real-life scenarios.
Project Type:Research and Innovation Actions
Project Duration: 3 years (1 September 2022 – 31 August 2025)
NEMO
Next Generation Meta Operating System
Description:
Massive IoT deployment and data generation are pushing for more effective operations on data and human-machine interactions, management and analytics. This introduces the concept of Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), a fusion of AI and IoT, supported by edge and cloud capabilities. Based on this, the EU-funded NEMO project aims to establish itself as a game changer in the AIoT-edge-cloud continuum proposing the next generation of open, modular and cybersecure meta-operating system. By exploiting existing open-source technologies and standards while introducing new concepts, methods and tools, NEMO will bring intelligence closer to the data and make AI-as-a-Service an integral part of micro-services’ lifecycle management. NEMO builds on easy development, ZeroOps deployment data monetisation and new business models, engaging communities and ecosystems to enable sustainability.
Project Type:Research and Innovation Actions
Project Duration: 3 years (1 September 2022 – 30 September 2025)
DYNABIC
Dynamic business continuity of critical infrastructures on top of adaptive multi-level cybersecurity
Description:
Adopting AI-based defensive solutions and innovative methods for business continuity risk management based on improved SecDevOps (making every decision from a security-first mindset) can considerably enhance the resilience of critical services. To support the provision of completely resilient critical services to European citizens, the EU-funded DYNABIC project aims to deliver socio-technical methods, models and tools for resilience management. It will produce and validate a framework that enables system operators to forecast, assess and mitigate in real time business continuity risks and their possible cascading effects.
Project Type:Research and Innovation Actions
Project Duration: 3 years (1 December 2022 – 30 November 2025)
AI4CYBER
Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence for Cybersecurity Reinforcement and System Resilience
Description:
Artificial intelligence (AI) has a big role to play in cybersecurity – good and bad. It can be a powerful mechanism to detect threats and protect systems against attacks. It can also be used by attackers as a weapon. In this context, the EU-funded AI4CYBER will provide an Ecosystem Framework of next-generation trustworthy cybersecurity services that leverage AI and Big Data technologies to support system developers and operators in effectively managing AI-powered cyberattacks. Specifically, it will develop a new breed of AI-driven software robustness and security testing services with smarter flaw identification and code-fixing automation. The project will focus on the energy and banking sectors, as well as hospital services.
Project Type:Research and Innovation Actions
Project Duration: 3 years (1 September 2022 – 31 August 2025)
ResilMesh
Situation Aware enabled Cyber Resilience for Dispersed, Heterogenous Cyber Systems
Description:
ReilMesh develops AI based algorithms to improve attack detection and prediction for endpoint and network traffic; it help CSIRTs deal digital infrastructure complexity and heterogeneity by providing tools to give them better awareness of environment dependencies, threats and risk while preserving privacy. It increases the reliability and granularity of shared threat intelligence to improve context for threat hunting and cyber forensics incident response leading to more robust decision making. Finally it provides a suite of best practices to build cyber capacity to improve resilience preparation.
Project Type:Innovation Actions
Project Duration: 3 years (1 October 2023 – 30 September 2026)
NEMECYS
NEw MEdical CYbersecurity assessment and design Solution
Description:
Personalised healthcare services are the future, supported by connected medical devices. These offer significant advantages, including reduced travel and stress for home-based patients, improved clinical decision support systems and automated adjustments of treatments. However, they also present significant challenges, with cybersecurity topping the list. While too little cybersecurity may lead to exposure of personal data or compromise of critical systems, too much is costly and can obstruct clinical care. In this context, the EU-funded NEMECYS project will improve connected medical device security by offering tools to key stakeholders: device manufacturers (supporting security by design), integrators deploying the devices in clinical scenarios and healthcare providers operating those scenarios. The tools will be validated in diverse case studies.
Project Type:Research and Innovation Actions
Project Duration: 2 years (1 January 2023 – 31 December 2025)
ARIEN
ARtificial IntelligencE in fighting illicit drugs production and traffickiNg
Description:
Illegal drug production and trafficking continue to pose significant challenges across Europe, fuelling organised crime and exploiting digital platforms. The growing role of the darknet and social media in drug-related activities has made it harder for authorities to track illicit operations. Financial flows linked to these crimes are complex and often hidden in unregulated online markets. Law enforcement agencies (LEAs) need innovative tools to understand, detect, and dismantle these networks. The EU-funded ARIEN project addresses this issue by using AI-driven tools to monitor and analyse drug trafficking in real-time. Through a multidisciplinary approach, ARIEN strengthens international cooperation and enhances the investigative capabilities of law enforcement agencies across the EU.
Project Type:Innovation Actions
Project Duration: 3 years (1 November 2023 – 31 October 2026)
NOUS
A catalyst for EuropeaN ClOUd Services in the era of data spaces, high-performance and edge computing
Description:
NOUS will develop the architecture of a European Cloud Service that allows computational and data storage resources to be used from edge devices and supercomputers through the HPC network and Quantum Computers. NOUS will be an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)/Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud provider, harnessing edge computing and decentralisation paradigms to incorporate a wide array of devices and machines in its computational flow to provide leaps in Europe’s capability to process vast amounts of data.The pipeline of the NOUS in the project will include three types of components: i) computational components that are responsible for executing computations, ii) edge components that are responsible for communicating with edge devices (such as IoT sensors/ actuators/ devices), iii) data storage components that are responsible for data storage and storage management.
Project Type:Research and Innovation Actions
Project Duration: 2 years (1 January 2024 – 31 December 2026)
CyberNEMO
End-to-end Cybersecurity to NEMO meta-OS
Description:
CyberNEMO will establish itself as a paradigm-shift to support resilience, risk preparedness, awareness, detection and mitigation within Critical Infrastructures deployments and across supply chains. To achieve technology maturity and massive adoption, CyberNEMO will not reinvent the wheel, but leverage on existing by-design, by-innovation, and by-collaboration zero-trust cybersecurity and privacy protection systems, and introduce novel concepts, methods, tools, testing facilities and engagement campaigns to go beyond todays state of the art and create sustainable innovation, already evident within the project lifetime.
Project Type:Innovation Actions
Project Duration: 3 years (1 October 2024 – 30 September 2027)
ENDURANCE
Strategies and Services for Enhanced Disruption Resilience and Cooperation in Europe
Description:
A proactive and collaborative approach is required to ensure resilience against cyber threats, physical attacks, human errors, and natural disasters. Currently, there is a siloed approach to critical infrastructure resilience and the business continuity of essential services. The EU-funded ENDURANCE project aims to strengthen Europe’s essential services against potential disruptions by focusing on critical assets and infrastructure. It recognises the importance of the CER and NIS2 Directives in building resilience and seeks to help authorities across the EU understand and implement both directives harmoniously. The project will develop datasets, registries, technologies, and services for secure sharing and federated processing of CER-relevant data, joint risk and resilience assessments, and large-scale stress testing of preparedness.
Project Type:Innovation Actions
Project Duration: 3 years (1 October 2024 – 30 September 2027)
R2D2
Reliability, Resilience and Defense technology for the griD
Description:
R2D2 strategic goal is to improve the resilience and reliability of current EPES (Electrical Power and Energy Systems) against a growing number of threats and vulnerabilities that may affect such critical infrastructure, exposing weaknesses with harmful and damaging effects on different stakeholders and final customers. This will be done through the deployment of four tools dedicated to the prevention, protection and restoration of EPES in two different independent but complementary scenarios in the energy value-chain – from regional coordination between TSOs, to privacy of LV customers. The project will build on top of strong energy coordination actions in South-East Europe (SEE), following EU legislation and in alignment with the recent activities promoted by ENTSO-Eabout cyber-security in transmission systems.
Project Type:Innovation Actions
Project Duration: 3 years (1 October 2022 – 30 September 2025)
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe framework programme under grant agreement No.101073909
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