Governance activities form the backbone of the network, supporting community activities that range from roadmap design to Request for Challenges, from monthly SPARTA Workshops to bi-yearly SPARTA Days. Research programs are continuously spun from strands of the roadmap, led by experts of their fields, and aim at generating concrete and transformative results.
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Get up to 88K€ to develop your security solution and cooperate with EU Top Security Clusters
25th Jan 2022
SecurIT is launching the first Open Call with the main objective of revolutionising the new global competitive security industry (product & service) by supporting a better integration of innovative security systems.This will be achieved by:
· supporting the development and integration of innovative security solutions in a new industrial value chain (and services);
· co-financing and supporting the development of collaborative projects allowing the prototyping and experimentation of technological solutions in the field of security, taking into account the ethical, legal and societal challenges of this sector;
· promoting cross-border cooperation between SMEs and other innovation actors in this sector.
Target: With the First Open Call SecurIT will select up to 21 projects aiming to develop new prototypes or demonstrators in the security and cybersecurity domain with support from SecurIT consortium.
Projects should be submitted by the consortia of a...
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Office de l'eau Goes Cyber with SPARTA
20th Jan 2022
The Go Cyber with SPARTA campaign promoted a full week of workshops to the water critical infrastructure of la Reunion, that took place both virtually and physically between Nov 10th and Nov 25th. Topics included modern cryptography, privacy protection, system security, network security, legal aspects, awareness strategies, industrial security and more. Critical infrastructure body and young digital companies were involved in the training. The workshop was very well perceived and suggestions for follow-up activities were made. Lectures were provided by BUT, IMT, SMILE and covered from their SPARTA budgets.More >>
La Reunion SMEs Go Gyber with SPARTA!
20th Jan 2022
The Go Gyber with SPARTA campaign discovered new avenues at La Reunion! SPARTA, in coolaboration with Digital Reunion, organised a cybersecurity training and awareness workshop to be deployed to SMEs based in La Reunion, working on the digital sector! Digital Reunion is an association that brings together market players, directly and indirectly, involved in the digital sector (companies, start-ups, groups, trade unions, institutions, training organizations, etc.), intending to participate in the creation of economic, legislative and competitive conditions essential to the proper development of the sector.The workshop was held on the 16th and 17th of November and took place both virtually and physically between Nov 10th and Nov 25th. Topics included modern cryptography, privacy protection, system security, network security, awareness strategies and more!
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Report: Understanding European Cybersecurity HR Recruitment Processes
28th Dec 2021
How organisations in Europe currently address the recruitment of cybersecurity specialists? This report - Understanding European Cybersecurity HR Recruitment Processes - seeks to answer this question and provides the foundation to create a Cyber HR Toolbox!The report is the result of the collaborative effort between ECSO and the European Cybersecurity Competence Network Pilot projects – ECHO, Concordia, SPARTA and CyberSec4Europe and provides the key findings and results from the analysis around understanding how cybersecurity recruitment and overall HR processes and motivations work in Europe, based on survey responses received over the course of two months (April-May 2021). This analysis results from the collaboration between ESCO Working Group (WG5) for human factors & competence building, and the Cybersecurity Competence Network.
Read the full report here.
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SPARTA Roadmap Design Highlights
22nd Dec 2021
SPARTA’s Work Package #3, responsible for roadmapping affairs in the SPARTA project and in the CCN ecosystem, has been mainly active on two fronts: internally, by compiling a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda within SPARTA towards strengthening EU’s digital autonomy, and externally, by coordinating discussions between the 4 Pilots and ECSO on consolidating the various individual cybersecurity roadmaps developed in the EU. In this dissemination report, we outline the highlights of both work streams.CCN Roadmaps Consolidation. The 4 CCN Pilots and ECSO benefit from large individual networks of partners, including large enterprises, SMEs, universities, and cybersecurity research institutes, that join efforts into identifying cybersecurity research & innovation priorities for retaining EU’s digital autonomy and sovereignty. Each consortium adheres to the common goal of strengthening and sustaining Europe’s cybersecurity competence, but the 4 Pilots and ECSO take slightly di...
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My way in cybersecurity
16th Nov 2021
A woman who works in a male-dominated field cannot usually say it’s easy. It has its advantages and disadvantages.When I started my professional career, I did not know what it would look like. I’ve always believed that doing complicated things like analyzing information to keep it safe or the security of data, people, computers, devices, networks was difficult. When I was offered a job at NASK, I had divergent thoughts about it. I felt it could be a big challenge, maybe even too big? I was surprised by this proposal because it seemed very difficult to work there. I had a lot of thoughts about whether I would be able to deal with it. And at the same time, something was fascinating about it. I had the prospect of doing great things. Nevertheless, I was wondering quite intensively if I could cope with this task.
My first job was to test a system that aggregated, analyzed and classified network incidents. I got the feeling that the programmers hated me. They hated me. I found bugs in...
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High Assurance Intelligent Infrastructure Toolkit: Program Results
21st Oct 2021
Program goalsThe High Assurance Intelligent Infrastructure Toolkit (HAII-T) Program deals with the menaces to the security of the modern, smart infrastructures. Intelligent infrastructures are objects of extreme complexity (aka systems of systems) which are difficult to protect and, contemporary, very appealing for an attacker.
The cornerstone of the HAII-T Program is that security must be considered along the entire life cycle of an infrastructure, starting from the very initial design fases. This apporach aims at supporting state-of-the-art best practices such as Security- and Privacy-by-Design. The toolkit is an integrated, extensible platform that follows the development phases of an infrastructure and, at each phase, provide the right tools for dealing with the relevant security aspects.
Ongoing activities
Hardening legacy components
We have started looking into reducing the attack surface of OS kernels by means of static program analysis, we are working on a prototype ...
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Secure and fair AI systems for citizens: Program Results
21st Oct 2021
The expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) has opened the doors for advancements and improvements in almost every domain of human life. However, the development of AI comes at a cost – the methods are not bulletproof, and may be thwarted by a number of issues, among them two major ones. One regards the technical side of it and is related to the fact how many new cyberattacks keep emerging, and consequently, require employing adequate countermeasures. The other set of challenges to the successful proliferation of AI are of the humanistic nature, and relate to the concepts such as trust, fairness and other social challenges. Among them, there is also the question of explainability, i.e. explaining the outcomes of an algorithm in a transparent way, so that human operators can understand where the decision is coming from. The need to answer all of those issues sits at the heart of the SAFAIR (Secure And FAIR AI systems for citizens) program. Its primary and most ambitious goal has be...More >>
SPARTA | The Future Needs You
18th Oct 2021
The instant interconnectivity brought by the rapid advances in technology revolutionised the way we lived and changed the paradigm of security. Cyberspace is a place shared by all the citizens, where social, political, and economic aspects are constantly emerging. As in the physical world, cyberspace faces a range of emerging challenges, namely concerning its security.An interconnected world means that cyberattacks can come from any part of the world. Cybercriminals, or non-ethical hackers, come from different countries, backgrounds, and cultures, being only possible to prevent cyberattacks globally if there is a common but diverse understanding of the reasons, ways, and forms of attacks. How? By creating cybersecurity teams with professionals from different cultural backgrounds. A diverse workforce is of utter importance to ensure national and global security, peace, and progress.
Besides the need for a diverse workforce, there is an urgent need to fill job positions. The increa...
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Local explanation of Machine Learning model with shapkit, a Python module that approximate Shapley Values
4th Oct 2021
Nowadays, Machine Learning models are used for various applications with already successful or promising results. Unfortunately, a common criticism is the lack of transparency associated with these algorithm decisions. This is mainly due to a greater interest in performance (measurable on specific tasks) at the expense of a complete understanding of the model. This results in a lack of knowledge of the internal working of the algorithm by the developer and the end user. The most obvious consequences are firstly a difficulty to correct the algorithm by an expert (different assumptions, removing outliers, adding new variables or diverse samples). Secondly, limiting its adoption by operational staff. There is even an urgent need for an explainable Artificial Intelligence (AI). There is no single definition of interpretability or explainability concerning model prediction. Therefore, there are several ways to proceed. Assessing them objectively is a real problem because we do not have u...More >>
