Cybersecurity Projects within H2020
In this area of cyber security and for collaborative projects, the key players with more than one project involvement are KU Leuven (Belgium) and ISCOM (Italy). The projects within this technological domain are funded under innovation and action (7 projects), research and innovation action (5 projects), Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (2 projects), Coordination and Support Actions (one project), European Research Council (one project) and a majority of them are funded under the SME funding scheme (11 projects).
The SCISSOR project (funded within RIA scheme) aims to develop new generation Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems for detecting and thwarting threats targeting industrial installations. This system holistically combines multiple layers comprising of a monitoring layer for traffic probes, a control, and coordination layer for gathering and consolidating heterogeneous data from different and remote probes, a decision and analysis layer and finally a human-machine layer that present system behavior to the human end user in a simplistic manner. Project PROTECTIVE (funded through IA scheme) focuses on increasing awareness among European organizations on the threats posed to their operations by enhancing the computer security incident response team’s (CSIRT) threat awareness through improved security monitoring and increased sharing of threat intelligence between organizations and ranking critical threat alerts based on the potential damage the attack can inflict on the organizations. Another IA funded project, C3ISP, based on a paradigm of collect, analyze, inform and react, will leverage on information sharing through a flexible and controllable manner inside a collaborative multi-domain environment to improve detection of cyber threats and response capabilities.
As mentioned, cyber-attacks do target transportation infrastructure and systems, and rail is as prone to these attacks as any other installation. In the project X2Rail-1 (RIA funded), one of the goals is to develop new cybersecurity systems dedicated to railways to ensure security among all connected signaling and control systems. With small businesses in mind, project FORTIKA (IA funded) is tailored towards minimizing exposure of small businesses to attacks and empower them to respond appropriately to cyber risks. This would be achieved by creating a resilient overall cyber security solution that can be easily tailored and adjusted to the versatile and dynamically changing needs of small businesses. Project COMPCAT, also IA funded, addresses the needs of public administrators (PAs) faced with a growing risk of cyber threats but hampered by technological, organizational and structural issues to efficiently improve their cybersecurity level. The project will provide the PAs with tools that are characterized by a high degree of usability by non-IT experts and automation and intended for risk assessment, education, monitoring and knowledge sharing.
Project WISER funded under IA has provided SMEs with pre-packaged risk management solution for SMEs, and Risk Management Platform as a Service (RMPaaS). These SMEs often lack the resources and expertise to make security a top priority and establish a strong IT security posture and thus the WISER’s analytical tools are simple and easy to use, facilitating security managers in understanding complex systems. Project ARIES, a RIA project, will leverage virtual and mobile IDs cryptographically derived from strong eID documents in order to prevent identity-theft and related crimes in the physical (e.g. an airport) and virtual (e.g eCommerce) domains. The project will provide a global approach for ID Ecosystem in Europe to address European-specific concerns to improve identity, trust and security, and better support the law enforcement to address the new threats to cybersecurity. By innovatively integrating social and computational sciences, project PROTON (RIA funded) aims at improving existing knowledge on the processes of recruitment to organized crime and terrorist networks and provide a support tool for policymakers at the international, national and local levels. Realizing the need for efficient and effective protective measures against ever-evolving cyber threats and by taking advantage of Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) technologies, project SHIELD (IA funded), seeks to provide a universal solution for dynamically establishing and deploying virtual security infrastructures into ISP and corporate networks.
The SMESEC consortium (IA funded) proposes the development of a cost-effective framework composed of specific cyber-security tool-kit to support SMEs in managing network information security risks and threats, as well as in identifying opportunities for implementing secure innovative technology in the digital market. In order to improve levels of collaboration between cooperative and regulatory approaches to information sharing SAINT project that is RIA funded proposes to advance measurement approaches and methodologies of the metrics of cybercrime. This would be achieved through constructing a framework of a new empirical science that challenges traditional approaches and fuses evidence-based practices with more established disciplines. Specifically, novel and experimental economics will aid SAINT in designing new methodologies for the development of an ongoing and searchable public database of cybersecurity indicators and open source intelligence.
