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SPARTA Days - Towards a sustainable CCN

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May Your Source Be Open! - SPARTA Hackathon II...

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HACK ME, I'M FAMOUS | SPARTA Monthly Workshop

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SPARTA Days - Towards a sustainable CCN

10th Jun 2022
Join us on the 14th and 15th of June 2022 for the SPARTA Days preparing for a sustainable Cybersecurity Competence Network. You will be thrilled to know about the SPARTA consortium journey and our contributions to the EU cybersecurity community.
Please find the agenda below.






For physical attendance is limited please apply to register here: Apply here

For remote attendance you can choose the session to attend by registering at the different links:

14th of June - Afternoon session: Link
15th of June - Morning session: Link
15th of June - Afternoon session: Link


On 14th of June, at Maison de la Chimie:

14:00 Opening words
14:10 Talk Cybersecurity through openness and diversity
14:30 Presentations
16:00 Partnership instrument - Roadmap instrument - Programs instrument - Governance instrument
16:00 Coffee break
16:30 Panel How to gather and consolidate inputs from various kinds of stakeholders?
17:30 Closing words


On 15th of June, at Campus Cyber:

09:15 Ope...
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Recent research by LMT shows that 5G can help detect election interference

25th May 2022
LMT has recently published a research paper providing a snapshot of current 5G feature capabilities and their potential for resilience-building against disinformation and election interference. The research was conducted within the T-SHARK program, which aims to establish a full-spectrum Cybersecurity Threat Intelligence Framework.

The research selected Latvian municipal elections in 2021 as a benchmark case study. Both mobile network and on-site election activity within selected balloting stations were monitored, observing correlation in real-time data, and highlighting further reliability improvements with 5G deployment.

The same elections were also analyzed by DeBunkEU.org within the scope of the T-SHARK program in 2021, demonstrating how the incidents collected from the different data sources can be linked for further analysis and how full-spectrum cybersecurity awareness can benefit decision-makers.

As the number of online components and equipment within the election process...
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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.

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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 goals

The 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...
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About

Mission

Re-imagining the way cybersecurity research, innovation, and training are performed in Europe across domains and expertise, from foundations to applications, in academia and industry

Impact

SPARTA will create a long-lasting community capable of collaboration to define, develop, share, and evolve solutions that will help practitioners prevent cybercrime and enhance cybersecurity.

Vision

Become a unique innovation force in cybersecurity with transformative impacts on European Union economy, infrastructures, society and democracy.

It's a tough road ahead

With one of the most advanced and multi-cultural research ecosystem in the world, the European Union has the means to take on the cybersecurity challenge. Its scientists have the opportunity to become a unique innovation force in cybersecurity with transformative impacts on our economy, infrastructures, society, and democracy.

Yet many challenges need to be addressed before such a vision can be successful.


How can we design and effectively maintain a European roadmap in cybersecurity research?

How might we cultivate out-of-the-box thinking in research endeavours?

What is the most effective way to maintain excellence in multi-disciplinary pursuits?

These first three items are instrumental to foster a culture of risk-taking – a critical asset for creativity in the face of innovative threats.

These last three items are absolutely key to ensure that the SPARTA network will produce concrete and transformative results. More importantly, they are instrumental in making these results suitable for a wide variety of applications in vertical sectors, creating technological vantage points and economic leverage.


How do we sustain strategic analysis and guidance for research and innovation?

What is the best way to implement flexibility in research actions?

How can we leverage the accumulated strengths of the European industry?

Organizing tomorrow's research activities

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.

Develop an ambitious Cybersecurity Research and Innovation Roadmap leveraging Europe’s strengths and opportunities, across multiple disciplines, maturity levels, and geographical locations.

Set up space, time, and means to enable research collaborations, leveraging the strengths of existing structures and organisations around a Joint Competence Center Infrastructure.

Explore innovative work in full- spectrum situational awareness, with the goal of enabling the supervision of complex systems over heterogeneous time scales.

Develop a foundation for secure- by-design intelligent infrastructure built on strong formal approaches, addressing multiple cybersecurity facets.

Investigate new avenues for continuous assessment and new evaluation tools and techniques for handling tomorrow's dynamic and elastic digital systems.

Devise approaches to make systems using AI more reliable and resilient through enhanced explainability and better threat understanding.

Foster the emergence of a thriving and responsible research and innovation model, allowing the development of unique innovation paths, contributing to European strategic autonomy.

Establish unparalleled traction with European, national, and regional ecosystems, relaying concrete requirements, disruptive ideas, and novel results through multi-level and cross-network actions and events.