The proposed Cyber-security Excellence Hub in Estonia and South Moravia (CHESS) will integrate leading cybersecurity institutions and capitalize on the strengths of both regions to address important Europe-wide challenges. South Moravia is a major ICT industry & education powerhouse of the Czech Republic, with a very focused and coherent smart specialization strategy targeting cybersecurity. Estonia is among the most advanced digital societies globally, with exceptional e-government deployment – which, however, makes it vulnerable to various cyber threats. CHESS will directly follow the strategies and roadmaps of the European Cybersecurity Competence Pilots and build on the experience of CHESS partners involved in all four of these pilots, contributing to safe transition of the EU to full-scale digital society. The CHESS Hub will conduct a thorough needs analysis of the two regions and develop a joint cross-border R&I strategy for cybersecurity. The strategy development will be aided by implementation of pilot R&I projects that will reinforce the cross-regional collaboration, engage regional innovation ecosystems and build evidence for future projects. Gaps in skills and expertise identified in the regions will be removed by training and knowledge transfer. Finally, dedicated task forces will ensure sustainability of CHESS by integration with regional, national, and EU-level strategies and funding programmes. To exploit the project outputs, especially the pilot project results, CHESS will aid with market potential assessment and link researchers and innovators with entrepreneurship training and business consultancy services available in the regions. The strategizing, skills-building and pilot R&I will cover the totality of the cybersecurity field, with special attention to 6 Challenge Areas: Internet of Secure Things; Security Certification; Verification of Trustworthy Software; Blockchain; Post-Quantum Cryptography; and Human-centric Aspects of Cybersecurity.

The overarching objective of the SECURE-NET project is to improve the research and innovation capabilities in cybersecurity of four widening countries: Estonia, Czechia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. This objective will be achieved via enhanced cross-sectoral collaboration and the better training of R&I talents. To this end, SECURE-NET brings together 11 partners: eight organizations from widening countries (four academic, three businesses, and one governmental organization) which will be supported by three partners from the Netherlands (two academic and one business entity). SECURE-NET will: i) develop a comprehensive framework for cross-sectoral staff secondments and R&I talents’ skill development; ii) provide 31 R&I talents from partner organizations with domain-specific knowledge and transferable skills in IP and technology transfer (with 27 secondees coming from widening countries and 22 secondees being early-career researchers or in junior positions); iii) strengthen cross-sectoral and cross-border collaboration between partners; and iv) enhance the international profile and visibility of the widening partners. As a result, SECURE-NET will contribute to better employability and career prospects for R&I talents and help overcome a lack of translation of scientific results into innovations. The latter is crucial to ensure that the EU catches up with other regions in terms of innovation output. Moreover, given the significant increase in both the variety and quantity of cyberattacks and their consequences in the European Union as whole, but in Eastern and Eastern Central Europe in particular, SECURE-NET is as timely as ever and will help safeguard the smooth operation of our highly digitized societies.

QARC is a targeted proposal that aims at the practical deployment of post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) technologies into real-world applications and infrastructures. It is focused on implementing PQC to open-source software and on specific platforms, such as embedded constrained devices and hardware platforms, such as Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). For these platforms, where secure implementations of PQC algorithms are still lacking, the consortium will develop novel prototypes and evaluate them in realistic pilots designed in collaboration with National Cyber Security Authorities (NCSAs). The focus will be devoted to 1) the design and implementation of hybrid schemes guaranteeing security even if legacy or some PQC families fail, 2) cryptographic agility providing easy cryptographic updates, and 3) implementation security and resistance to side-channel attacks. Using secure implementations, pilots on eGovernment, Cloud infrastructures, NCSAs’ services, and open-source software will be run across the EU to obtain exemplary deployment strategies and create good practices for the transition from legacy to PQC cryptography. A major component of QARC is the strong involvement of National Cyber Security Authorities as consortium partners. This will ensure coordinated transition strategies and aligned national roadmaps. The project includes activities for building the NCSA network, creating policy briefs, conducting comparative studies of multiple roadmap implementations in different countries, identifying lessons learned, and facilitating scientific, commercial, and community support in these transitions. A particular focus is given to small-to-medium countries with agencies with limited resources. In addition to technical tasks, the QARC project also includes activities focused on standardization and legislation updates and the training and awareness-raising activities that are necessary components of successful PQC transition.

With the emergence of the digitization of information, ICT infrastructure and communications gave an unprecedented push towards the realization of truly interconnected passenger transport ecosystems at city-level. The emerging notion of multimodality supports a plethora of diverse transport services, typically offered from a central location. There however, the complex interconnected infrastructures ease the cyber-threats propagation while the underlying mosaic of fleets, personal hand-held devices and non-standardized data types increase the system's attack surface and require the authorities collaboration to proactively handle severe incidents. CitySCAPE leverages the skills and mature technology of its 15-partner consortium to systematically explore all different cybersecurity dimensions of multimodal transport. These dimensions will drive a characterization of the cyber-threats in the ICT multimodal transport, extended to the close-by power and financial sector. Innovative software tools will be introduced to estimate the threats propagation in the system. Then, CitySCAPE will realize a modular software toolkit enabled to be seamlessly integrated into any multimodal transport system to: a)detect suspicious traffic-data values and identify persistent threats; b)evaluate an attack's impact in technical and notably in financial terms; c)combine external knowledge and internally-observed activities to enhance the predictability of zero-day attacks; d)instantiate a networked overlay to circulate informative notifications to CERT authorities and support their interplay. The CitySCAPE solution will be tested over a timely set of use-cases involving ticketing applications, cyber-fraud and location data in the regional transport system of two European cities, where extensive experiments will showcase its effectiveness. The findings will steer training sessions of expert/non-expert audience and shape a strong standardization contribution to security (labelling) protocols.

EU-HYBNET is a Pan-European network of security practitioners, stakeholders, academics, industry players, and SME actors across EU collaborating with each other in ever increasing numbers to counter hybrid threats. EU-HYBNET aims to build an empowered, sustainable network beyond the scope of the project through its on-going association with a key partner, The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, and it will: define common requirements that can fill knowledge gaps, deal with performance needs, and enhance capabilities of innovation endeavours; monitor significant developments in research and innovation; deliver recommendations for uptake and industrialisation of the most promising innovations that address the needs of practitioners, and determine associated priorities for standardisation; establish conditions for enhanced interaction among its members; and persistently strive to increase its membership and continually build network capacity through knowledge exchange incl. exercises. EU-HYBNET's principal objectives align with the H2020 SEC-SU-GM01-2019 call and are of crucial relevance to it. A technology and innovations watch, facilitated by scientific research, will ensure smooth execution of searching, monitoring, identifying and assessing innovations both under development or already proven, including the level of technology readiness for uptake or industrialisation. EU-HYBNET will bring together practitioners and stakeholders to identify and define their most urgent requirements for countering hybrid threats by undertaking an in-depth analysis of gaps and needs and prioritising those that are crucial to address through effective research and innovation initiatives, including arranging training and exercise events to test the most promising innovations (technical and social) which will lead to creation of a roadmap for success and solid recommendations for uptake, industrialisation and standarisation across the European Union.