– 56 institutions from 21 countries across Europe collaborated on the research and innovation project

More than 21 outcomes, over 300 scientific publications, a multi-stakeholder ecosystem bringing together stakeholders from research, industry, start-ups and public bodies: all this and more was achieved by the European CONCORDIA project, which ended on 31st March. The four-year, €16-million project (plus €7 million of industrial funding) covered a wide range of topics, including cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, information security and data protection, certification, and competence building.

“Multiple crises such as the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and climate and energy crises underline the increasing importance of building a secure, trusted and resilient digitally sovereign Europe,” said project coordinator Professor Gabi Dreo from the University of the Bundeswehr Munich.

“CONCORDIA has fully achieved its objective of building such an ecosystem, being agile, innovative and open. CONCORDIA’s results will not only provide valuable input to the European Cybersecurity Competence Centre and the network of National Cybersecurity Centres, and with this to the whole European cybersecurity community, but they will also work to strengthen and speed up research, development, and especially innovation.”

The CONCORDIA project delivers 21 outcomes to help counter the rapidly growing number of complex cyberattacks and the increasing threat landscape. They are divided into six main categories: Policy, Technology Tools, Education, Technology Pilots, and Certification and Research. All the results are now available to the public on the project website.

One of the outputs is a set of strategic recommendations for cybersecurity in Europe published under the title Roadmap for Cybersecurity in Europe. It links various areas such as research and innovation, education, economics and investment, law, and certification and standardization in a holistic way. So far, interest has focused mainly on research and development aspects of cybersecurity. The new strategy document describes nine fundamental dimensions that affect cybersecurity, showing where the current focus should be. A CONCORDIA Monitoring Board has been developed for the continuous gathering of feedback from the cybersecurity community.

Other tools include the KYPO Cyber Range Platform, which Masaryk University developed and, thanks to the project, released as open source in 2020.

“We believe the KYPO Cyber Range Platform is a significant contribution to the cybersecurity community. The open-source cyber range makes hands-on cybersecurity education widely available to universities and organizations in Europe and worldwide,” said Jakub Čegan, the head of cybersecurity exercises at Masaryk University.

“This activity aims to address the great lack of cybersecurity experts by providing a platform for the development and execution of cybersecurity training and exercises.” The KYPO Cyber Range was awarded the 2021 EC Innovation Radar competition in the Disruptive Tech category.

Defence against DDoS attacks is addressed by another of the project’s tools – the DDoS Clearing House, piloted in Italy and the Netherlands. Sharing data and the experience of experts in the face of attacks helps organizations find out what attacks exist so they can prepare for them in advance. Developing Cyber Threat Intelligence platforms for the telco and finance sectors are other examples of the project’s achievements.

The CONCORDIA project (Cyber security cOmpeteNCe fOr Research anD Innovation) links the technical and social sciences and involves 56 institutions from across the EU, including universities, research centres, private companies and public bodies from 17 EU member states, Switzerland, Norway, Israel and the UK. It is coordinated by the University of the Bundeswehr Munich. The project is funded by the European Union to an amount of almost 16 million euros. The project started on 1st January 2019 and ended on 31st March 2023.

The CONCORDIA project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 830927.

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The ENISA Report “Cybersecurity for SMEs”, provides insights on the relationship of European SMEs with digital tools and the challenges faced. For example, the majority of the European SMEs that participated in the survey, use various information services as part of their daily business operations (e.g.Teleworking, e-banking, email and communication services) and 85% of the organisations have identified cybersecurity as a key concern.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the EU’s economy. They represent 99% of all businesses in the EU and employ around 100 million people. They also account for more than half of Europe’s GDP and play a key role in adding value to all sectors of the EU economy. They serve both as enablers for the digital transformation and as a core element of the EU social fabric.

Contrary to a concept that cyber-attacks occur only to large organisations, all enterprises can be attacked regardless of their size and stored information.Within this report, seven categories of major challenges for SMEs have been identified:

• low cybersecurity awareness of the personnel,
• inadequate protection of critical and sensitive information,
• lack of budget,
• lack of ICT cybersecurity specialists,
• lack of suitable cybersecurity guidelines specific to SMEs,
• shadow IT, i.e. shift of work in ICT environment out of SME’s control,
• low management support.

The ENISA Report concludes with recommendations and guidance at a company, national and European level. On the other hand, as part of the CONCORDIA project Task T4.3, a methodology for cybersecurity planning and investment has been proposed, as a way to further assist and guide SMEs regarding cybersecurity.

Purpose of this report

A team comprising of members from Task 4.3 (Economics) and Task 5. 3. (Certification and Standardisation), took the recommendations of the ENISA reports and sought out to investigate if such guidelines, templates and standards exist and whether they are in line with the relevant results of the CONCORDIA project.

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A set of strategic recommendations under the title ‘Roadmap for Cybersecurity in Europe’ has been launched by a group of experts from more than 50 European institutions. They have also created an interactive website where professionals from across the EU can comment on the document until the end of March. The roadmap was produced within the Concordia project, which brings together universities, innovation centres and private companies from 27 European countries. 

Cybersecurity is a matter of increasing urgency for public, academic and private institutions. More complex attacks can affect people’s daily lives, the functioning of companies and even operations of state.

“The introduction of innovations such as the cloud and edge computing, new networking technologies and artificial intelligence, the shift to remote work enforced by pandemics, and a lack of qualified professionals and necessary skills – all these factors have a fundamental effect on cybersecurity today,” explain the experts working on the project.  “Shortcomings in these areas have been immediately exploited by various threat actors with malicious intent, who have quickly taken advantage of this situation by exploiting social engineering and the software supply chain to mount attacks.”

Interest has so far focused mainly on technological aspects of cybersecurity. This focus is no longer sufficient, experts say. The new strategy document therefore describes nine fundamental dimensions that affect cybersecurity, showing where the current focus should be laid. These dimensions include for an example research and innovation, education, economics and investment, law, and certification and standardisation. It is also necessary to consider building a community of experts, institutions and other centres that will help ensure a secure and resilient European cybersecurity system.

Professionals can now comment on each of the areas in the document on an interactive website. Comments and additions will be displayed to the authors in a special form and taken into account in the new strategy once the commenting process is closed.

The Concordia project brings together natural, technical and social sciences. It involves 54 institutions from across the EU, including universities, innovation centres and private companies from Germany, Switzerland, Norway, the Netherlands, the UK, the Czech Republic and 21 other countries. It is coordinated by the Bundeswehr University Munich. The project is funded by the European Union to an amount of almost 16 million euros. A set of recommendations, the so-called roadmap, is one of the key outputs of the project, which will end in March.

The post Press Release: Experts launch roadmap for European cybersecurity and ask for comments appeared first on CONCORDIA.

We are proud to announce the release of the interactive tool that empowers cybersecurity experts to influence the Cybersecurity Roadmap for Europe, which was also delivered by the CONCORDIA project.

The CONCORDIA Monitorboard allows experts to rank challenges and recommendations or create new ones, providing a platform for them to share their insights and directly impact the Cybersecurity Roadmap for Europe.

The Cybersecurity Roadmap for Europe defines fundamental challenges and recommendations in nine dimensions: 

• Threat Landscape, 
• Research and Innovation, 
• Education and Skills, 
• Economics, 
• Investments, 
• Legal and Policy, 
• Certification, 
• Standardization, 
• and Community Building.

CONCORDIA Cybersecurity Roadmap for Europe in a Nutshell

The Roadmap is a crucial outcome of the CONCORDIA project for boosting European Cybersecurity. The main strategic objective of the CONCORDIA project is to lead the integration of Europe’s excellent cybersecurity competencies into the network of expertise to build the European secure, resilient, and trusted ecosystem for the Digital Sovereignty of Europe.

The post CONCORDIA launches Interactive Tool for Influencing Cybersecurity Roadmap for Europe! appeared first on CONCORDIA.

We prepared the Field Manual to help you design your hands-on cybersecurity training in KYPO CRP. It is a minimalistic summary of our know-how gained through years of practice.

It is a challenge to design good cybersecurity training. We know it very well because we have done it many times – we trained professionals from giant energy companies, the government, or the bank sector.

However, it is meaningful to face this challenge. We all know that a skilled workforce is crucial in the domain. The digital resilience of our society requires professionals.

That’s the reason why we decide to create this Field Manual. It combines the main principles from several disciplines (management, andragogy, design, or even psychology) and the KYPO Cyber Range Platform fundamentals).

Of course, this is not a comprehensive description nor a substitute for KYPO CRP documentation. It is a minimalistic guide that will help the cybersecurity community create a mental model for preparing training.

We created the manual with the significant contribution of the CONCORDIA H2020 project

The post Field Manual for Cybersecurity Training Design appeared first on CONCORDIA.

The CONCORDIA Methodology and Guidelines for high school is out. Teachers are offered a flexible approach and 24 fiches to help prepare their cybersecurity and cybersafety related lessons.  

The CONCORDIA Methodology and Guidelines in support of high-school teachers describes a model of teaching and includes detailed information on how to address different cybersecurity and cybersafety topics in high school. We are also pointing to related initiatives deployed in different European countries. The document contains 470+ references and is structured as shown below:

The Methodology

The process we are proposing follows 3 phases: Assess/Plan/Deliver. At the core of our Methodology are (i) the active engagement of the students from the Assess phase, and (ii) the usage of the practical examples (see BYOE concept) and games/videos to illustrate the cybersecurity and cybersafety concepts. 

The Guidelines

The document covers 12 cybersafety and 12 cybersecurity topics we identified in the preparatory phase as essential to detail. Some of the topics are described at different levels of difficulty (Foundation, Intermediate, Advanced) as we considered fit for the high-school level, having in mind that we are addressing with this methodology a wide range of schools.

As part of cybersecurity, we thought relevant to provide a bit of guidance also on the most common cybersecurity related role profiles and certification schemes, to help students visualize a potential career path. 

The Annex 

The document closes with an annex grouping relevant initiatives deployed in Europe. The tabled structure helps teachers grasp easily the topic addressed, the age segment, the language, before deciding to explore it further. 

Let us know!

Are you a high school teacher interested to apply this methodology and use the cybersecurity / cybersafety related fiches we propose?

Drop us a message at contact@concordia.eu and we will update you on the related activities planned for beginning of 2023.

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This policy brief was created by the cyber-range project group that has come together under the umbrella of the Horizon Results Booster programme of the European Commission to jointly disseminate results that help tackle key challenges in the cybersecurity training sector.

 The project group created the following policy brief that covers these recommendations: 

– Making cyber ranges more accessible

– Cybersecurity training is not just an IT issue

– Open cybersecurity training and exercises

– European cybersecurity training and exercises community

 [Read the full version]

The post Cyber Ranges for a Resilient Europe – A policy brief appeared first on CONCORDIA.

The European Research Consortium in Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) has a technical WG on Security and Trust Management (STM) for performing a series of activities, as research projects, workshop/conference organization, dissemination of knowledge, for increasing the European research and development capabilities on security, trust, and privacy.

One of the main goals of the WG is to promote the scientific growth of young researchers interested in the field of security and trust management. ERCIM STM WG then decided to establish an award for the best Ph.D. thesis in this area to increase the visibility of the young researchers within the ERCIM scientific community as well as in the scientific community in general.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• applied cryptography;
• data and application security;
• identity management;
• networked systems security;
• privacy, anonymity, and untraceability;
• rigorous semantics and computational models for security and trust;
• security, privacy, and trust in emerging computing paradigms;
• security and trust management architectures, mechanisms, and policies.

Applications for the award in 2022 are open to all Ph.D. holders that defended their thesis during 2021 in any European University. Applications consisting of the Ph.D. Thesis (in PDF format), a short summary of the Thesis (mandatory in English), a curriculum vitae (in PDF format), and letters of support from at least two researchers, one of whom should be from an ERCIM STM WG Institution, should be sent by Aug. 19, 2022 to fabio.martinelli@iit.cnr.it. Please use “ERCIM STM PhD Award 2022 — Application” as subject of the message.

Theses will be evaluated by the following Committee:

• Sabrina De Capitani di Vimercati, University of Milan
• Theo Dimitrakos, University of Kent and Huawei
• Sokratis Katsikas, NTNU
• Sotiris Ioannidis, TUC
• Thomas Jensen, INRIA
• Javier Lopez, University of Malaga
• Peter Y A Ryan, University of Luxembourg

The theses will be judged on the basis of scientific quality, originality, clarity of presentation, as well as potential impact of the results.

The ceremony for the award will be held during the 18th International Workshop on Security and Trust Management (STM 2022) collocated with ESORICS conference.

The post CALL FOR APPLICATIONS ERCIM STM WG 2022 Award for the Best Ph.D. Thesis on Security and Trust Management appeared first on CONCORDIA.

CONCORDIA WOMEN’s AWARDS are established to celebrate women in cybersecurity. The awards aim to recognize outstanding women working in cybersecurity and privacy. The prizes intend to encourage young females to continue pursuing their careers in cybersecurity and praise prominent women for their outstanding contributions and achievements.

CONCORDIA WOMEN’s AWARDS cover different areas of the cybersecurity ecosystem, as detailed below.

• CONCORDIA Women’s Award on Entrepreneurship
• CONCORDIA Women’s Award on Education
• CONCORDIA Women’s Award on Industry

More information here!

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The need for skilled cybersecurity staff has never been higher. Hands-on training is an effective way of learning cybersecurity. Would you like to design such training for your purposes?

• May 31^st, 13:00 CET, Zoom

This webinar will introduce you to designing cybersecurity training on the example of a specific use case.

We will share with you our experiences and knowledge earned in designing cybersecurity training for students, companies from the energy sector, or even state actors.

• Firstly, we will explore the basic methodological questions like setting the goal for the training or structuring the learning experience.
• Then, we will demonstrate the training development using the KYPO Cyber Range Platform (CRP).
• Finally, we will give you a quick live guide on how to deploy the KYPO CRP Lite tool so you will see how simple is that. 

What is KYPO Lite?
KYPO Lite is a new tool that can deploy KYPO CRP quickly with zero configuration, enabling users to evaluate KYPO CRP or create KYPO content without being a DevOps expert. In other words, you can have your KYPO CRP for designing cybersecurity training in a few hours.

Target Audience

This event is primary intended for people who are interested in designing their cybersecurity hands-on training for their purposes using KYPO Cyber Range Platform.

However, it will be valuable also managers and decision makers who are looking for cybersecurity innovations that can be useful for their organizations.

Agenda

Speakers

Jakub Cegan

Jakub is in charge of developing and executing red team/blue team cybersecurity exercises and red/purple team testing for the commercial sector. He also leads the development of hands-on training scenarios for the open-source KYPO Cyber Range Platform and promotes the platform itself.

He tries to combine adversary thinking of attackers with knowledge of security team operating procedures and storylines based on real-life attacks to create engaging exercises and training.

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubcegan/
• https://twitter.com/jakubcegan

Tomas Sapak

Tomas is an IT specialist at CERIT, currently responsible for the automated deployment of KYPO CRP following the latest DevOps principles. In the last ten years, he was responsible for building and operating large virtualized and cloud infrastructures for Masaryk University and CESNET according to IaaC methodology. Tomáš has expertise in public and private cloud architectures. He enjoys cloud resources orchestration with Terraform, configuration management with Ansible and Puppet, and application packaging/deployment with Helm and Kubernetes.

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomas-sapak-b41b98105/

Vojtech Hamersky

Vojtech is an expert worker at CERIT (Centre for Education, Research and Innovation in Information and Communication Technologies) at Masaryk University. His work is focused on the area of education within the cybersecurity services offered by CERIT associated with KYPO. He has been designing and co-creating e-learning cybersecurity courses or participating in various practical cybersecurity exercises.

• https://cz.linkedin.com/in/vojtechhamersky

Tomas Kacvinsky

Tomas is an IT developer at CERIT (Centre for Education, Research and Innovation in Information and Communication Technologies) at Masaryk University. His responsibility is to create and manage automated virtual infrastructures used in cybersecurity exercises in KYPO. It includes mainly using the automation tool Ansible for configuring primarily Linux-based systems.

The post How to design your hands-on cybersecurity training: a webinar appeared first on CONCORDIA.