New H2020 calls in the area of critical infrastructure protection (CIP)
During the second half of 2017, TPEB has continued working on the realisation of the project Critical infrastructure protection funded under the Entrepreneurship and Innovation for Competitiveness programme. The main goal of the project is to stimulate international cooperation and form the consortia applying for H2020 calls. The project follows the previous project Energy and cyber security that was successfully finalized in 2015. Under this project the process of active forming of the international cooperative network in the widely understood area of critical infrastructure protection started.
Forming the international cooperative and innovative consortia has belonged among the most dynamic agendas of TPEB during the last years, when the platform helped to put together procedurally as well as substantively 7 consortia that successfully responded to H2020 calls. All projects were concerned with or related to wider area of critical infrastructure protection.
Reflecting the crucial priorities of TPEB, most of the submitted projects aimed to the Secure societies – Protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens program and Industrial leadership program in case of the ICT projects. As regards the latter area, it is possible to mention the project dealing with an adaptive approach to cyber security in CIP area, which was led by the University of Sheffield. However, most of the TPEB´s interests are covered by the Secure Societies programme and especially its Disaster Resilience Society section. The section harboured the call focusing on smartgrids solutions, where TPEB joined a project led by the technical innovative giant ATOS (Spain) that also included large application guarantors such as Polish energy company Tauron or Israeli Electric Corporation. Additionally, there was even a larger project looking at application of UAV and UGV during critical CBRN incidents. This project was led by the UK/Greek innovation company EXUS which also invited TPEB to other two innovative projects.
As regards the latest working programme TPEB has joined other two consortia. The first project – BehavVer – Behavioural Patterns Verification for Prevention of Physical Penetration using Identity Theft intends to develop BehavVer software (the name is the abbreviation for Behavioural Patterns Verification) to prevent identity theft based on video surveillance of physical behavioural patterns (i.e. how the person usually behaves), especially when other identity control mechanisms are outmanoeuvred by the attacker or not applicable. This project is led by the University of Zilina and involves partners from Austria, Poland, or the UK.
The second project called Pan-European Network of Practitioners in the field of Critical Infrastructures (EU-CIRP) intends to further stimulate cooperation among the relevant CIP stakeholders while focusing on an evaluation of recent efforts in the area and searching for strategic and standardisation solutions for existing challenges. The above-mentioned project creates a strategic opportunity to involve TPEB members in the follow-up project activities related to critical infrastructure protection. Although this is not an innovative project, it raises great expectations on the part of TPEB since it virtually offers a chance to promote all her national capabilities to the international level. This consortium is led by the Greek institute KEMEA, which is greatly experienced in European security-related research.
As regards the current working programme, TPEB also intends to focus on the Secure Societies programme. When screening the programme TPEB could also use the newly introduced foresight study.
The following list includes calls with the August application deadlines that reflect the interests of the programme as well as discussions of the potential innovations held at the foresight workshop in December 2017.
Prevention, detection, response and mitigation of combined physical and cyber threats to critical infrastructure in Europe, http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/topics/su-infra01-2018-2019-2020.html
- Proposals should cover: forecast, assessment of physical and cyber risks, prevention, detection, response, and in case of failure, mitigation of consequences (including novel installation designs), and fast recovery after incidents, over the life span of the infrastructure, with a view to achieving the security and resilience of all functions performed by the installations, and of neighbouring populations and the environment.
Cybersecurity in the Electrical Power and Energy System (EPES): an armour against cyber and privacy attacks and data breaches, http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/topics/su-ds04-2018-2020.html
- The proposals should demonstrate how the actual EPES can be made resilient to growing and more sophisticated cyber and privacy attacks and data breaches (including personal data breaches) taking into account the developments of the grid towards a decentralised architecture and involving all stakeholders. The proposals should demonstrate the resilience of the EPES through the design and implementation of adequate measures able to make assets and systems less vulnerable, reducing its expositions to cyberattacks. Different scenarios of attacks with the expected potential disruptive effects on the EPES should be envisaged and the relative counteracting measures should be designed, described, tested (sandboxing, simulations) on a representative energy demonstrator to verify effectiveness.
Digital security, privacy, data protection and accountability in critical sectors, http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/topics/su-ds05-2018-2019.html
- Among the critical sectors mentioned in the NIS Directive, proposals should treat generic aspects for at least two of them, by identifying common threats and attacks, and by developing proof of concepts for managing cybersecurity and privacy risks. In addition, proposals should treat specific aspects for one of the three critical sectors/domains mentioned as sub-topics, i.e. transport, healthcare and finance, by identifying specific vulnerabilities, propagation effects and counter measures, by developing and testing cyber innovation-based solutions and validating them in pilots/demonstrators. During the conception and development steps, critical sectors/domains‘ specificities, such as complexity of infrastructure and their large scale, should be taken into account. These pilots/demonstrators are encouraged to use relevant transversal cyber infrastructures and capabilities developed in other projects.
Pre-normative research and demonstration for disaster-resilient societies, https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/topics/su-drs03-2018-2019-2020.html
- Proposals are invited to address issues related to pre-standardisation, in particular:
Sub-topic 2: [2019] Pre-standardisation in crisis management (including natural hazard and CBRN-E emergencies).
Generally speaking, the development of standards for civil protection in the areas of crisis management (including for systems, tools and services related to natural hazard and CBRN-E emergencies) will increase interoperability of equipment and procedures. Innovation actions should bring validated and positively-assessed practices into standards within or outside current standardisation processes. The involvement of well-established standardisation organisations is required. The complementarity of the proposed activities with activities supported by the European Defence Agency (EDA) in the CBRN-E area should be described comprehensively.
The complete Working programme can be found here http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/wp/2018-2020/main/h2020-wp1820-security_en.pdf
TPEB CR is about to join another consortium applying for a project within the H2020 call Protecting the Infrastructure of Europe and the people in the EU. The project will focus on prevention, detection, response and mitigation of combined physical and cyber threats to critical infrastructure in Europe. Given its nature TPEB will concentrate on the issue related to energy critical infrastructure protection. The project is in a preparatory phase now while the application deadline is on 23rd August 2018. Specific information will follow.
In line with the Implementation Action Plan and based on the experience, TPEB is ready to build on the interests of her members and link their ideas other partners of the forming international cooperative network. From the side the platform is also ready mediate the interests of her European partners to her membership base.
