The emergence of quantum computing as a transformative technology has made secure hardware and software development an imperative. Quantum computing’s potential depends on robust, secure infrastructures that support quantum algorithms while addressing vulnerabilities. However, rapid development often prioritizes functionality and speed over security, creating gaps in comprehensive quantum-specific security practices, as highlighted by agencies like ENISA and NIST. Such gaps pose risks due to quantum algorithms' complex attack surfaces, which traditional security solutions cannot adequately address. This challenge is especially pertinent in the European Union (EU), where it is essential to integrate security engineering in both software and hardware development, ensuring compliance with EU standards and providing auditable quantum systems. The SecQdevOps project tackles these critical issues by creating a secure, continuous DevOps pipeline explicitly designed for quantum software and hardware development. Leveraging quantum high-level programming languages like Qiskit and Eclipse QRISP, alongside secure hardware-aware compilers, SecQdevOps provides automated security assessments and real-time vulnerability detection to build efficient, trustworthy quantum applications resilient to cyber threats. A unique aspect of SecQdevOps is the Internet of Quantum Things (IoQT), a distributed platform that connects emulated quantum devices across multiple secure nodes for collaborative testing and development, offering a secure “playground” for next-generation developers.

6G technologies, benefitting from softwarisation, Gb/s speed and sub-THz communications paradigms, open up opportunities for developing new and innovative network management strategies while navigating the evolution toward disaggregation, new software-based paradigms in architecting and operating future connectivity platforms, and embracing features of computing, automation and smartness, trust, privacy and security. Supported by this technology evolution, as the vision of new, smart and innovative capabilities is becoming a reality, superb user experience is expected even in presence of mobility and resource volatility. However, the fundamentally new and unknown features of advanced, disaggregated, virtualized and multi-vendor 6G based infrastructures, challenge the security and resilience design to the next level, by managing the unknown, complex and highly versatile infrastructures as they evolve. Indeed, the future deployment of 6G networks is inextricably connected with an integration of diverse hardware elements and infrastructures, thus leading not only to a highly heterogeneous environment, but also to functions and features that cannot be anticipated at the time of design. The vision of HORSE in this complex scenario, is to deal with the technology solutions, and system evaluation not yet foreseen, towards an omnipresent, smart and secure network service provisioning in the future network-of-networks landscape. To this end, HORSE proposes a novel human-centric, open-source, green, sustainable, coordinated provisioning and protection evolutionary platform, which can inclusively yet seamlessly combine advancements in several domains, as they get added to the system (e.g., predictive threats detection, proactive business-wise threats and breaches mitigation actions, programmable networking, semantic communications, Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), intent-based networking, AI-based techniques, cross-layer management of physical layer features, etc.).

The intense ongoing work towards 5G readiness has reached the point where the performance gains provided by 5G infrastructures should be exploited by third party innovators and SMEs, to create a new, open and dynamic ecosystem from both technology and marketing perspectives. Towards the materialization of the 5G performance gains at application and market level, key contributions are expected by the domain of design and development of Network Application (NetApp). In this context, EVOLVED-5G endorses the vision where the world of NetApps follows the paradigm of mobile applications hosted in a related market place. Moreover, the EVOLVED-5G project will contribute towards the fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0. Recognized as one of the major vertical industries by 5G-PPP (referring to the digital evolving of workspaces), Industry 4.0 brings innovative use cases, yet technologically challenging, and create a fertile environment for SME-driven entrepreneurship, where new use case-tailored functions (as NetApps) can be provided to compose a digitalized, secure, and automated generation of the industrial operations (mainly referring to functions for process and machine control as well as procedures for advanced product lifecycle management). The industry-oriented EVOLVED-5G NetApps will be tested, validated, and certified in a vendor-agnostic experimentation platform, and progressively define the first set of NetApps that the EVOLVED-5G marketplace will host.

SEPTON aims to address the gap in the generic technologies and processes referring to the IT network infrastructure with a holistic approach towards reinforcing NMD security within the healthcare centre premises. The project will advance cutting-edge solutions in healthcare cybersecurity targeting the aforementioned health providers and particularly focusing on networked medical devices (NMDs). The SEPTON approach will result in a comprehensive cybersecurity toolkit providing tools and mechanisms to be used in hospitals and care centres for a) the protection of networked medical devices, including wearable and implantable devices, and using techniques such as polymorphism b) the secure and privacy preserving data exchanges between NMDs, utilising techniques such as blockchain, differential privacy and encryption c) behavioural anomaly detection, utilising a cybersecurity analytics framework coupled with machine learning techniques and hardware acceleration for increased performance and d) NMD vulnerability assessment. The usability of the proposed solutions will be tested in a realistic setup via extensive pilot trials, facilitated by the participation of two healthcare organisations

As we live in a data-driven era, the emergence of interdisciplinary, geographically dispersed, data repositories, is inevitable. The fact that these repositories do not necessarily abide with existing interdisciplinary data representation standards, nor do they necessarily belong to any data federation initiative, renders them unusable, since researchers cannot easily access this data. Moreover, most of the times, integrity, privacy, and security in such interactions is either very difficult, or impossible to maintain. Towards this end, TRUSTEE aims to bring a green, secure, trustworthy, and privacy-aware framework that will aggregate various interdisciplinary data repositories, such as Healthcare, Education, Energy, Space, Automotive, Cross-border etc. and also consider other European data federation spaces and trans-national initiatives, such as Gaia-X and EOSC. TRUSTEE will offer a secure-by-design framework, wherein stored data is homomorphically encrypted, thus offering researchers i) ability to search and use data in the encrypted domain, ii) a unified and meaningful FAIR representation of data, in an open and fair manner, iii) complex and context-aware queries through advanced ontologies, iv) data processing and analysis through transparent trustworthy ML workflows, over an intuitive AI playground, which will promote AI eXplainability, interoperability, and re-usability, by utilizing state of the art methods and paradigms, v) compliance with European privacy and ethical frameworks, e.g., GDPR, PIA, etc., vi) enforce privacy by applying a Homomorphic encryption layer, through which all data interaction will take place, vii) a blockchain-based transaction recorder to ensure accountability. TRUSTEE's fully encrypted solution will be validated through six different use cases supporting GAIA-X, EOSC, EGI, etc. demonstrating a multi-disciplinary, Pan-European federated FAIR and private data ecosystem.