Open Call for Cybersecurity and Systems for Improved Resilience

Open Call for Cybersecurity and Systems for Improved Resilience

Deadline: 24-Nov-22

The European Commission (EC) is offering grants for Cybersecurity and Systems for Improved Resilience.

Objectives
Kinetic and digital military operations increasingly rely on computers and networked communications for information gathering, intelligence, coordination and weapon control. At the same time as the dependencies on digital technologies rapidly grows, so does the potential threats and vulnerabilities. The global community, military, and battlefield may be affected by increasing threats.
Currently, many cybersecurity solutions are being used or under development or research. However, cyber threats continue to evolve affecting the systems and services on which today’s community relies.
A test environment is imperative to determine how to enhance the security of a system, product, or component, through the generation of effective tests for analysing the system in question, its threat response capability, resulting in forensic dissemination, procedures, and proposals of improved architectures.
Most legacy specialized military systems are not directly vulnerable to cyber-attacks and malware employed in the open Internet, yet a growing use of ICT/IoT Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) components and increasing connectivity may increment the likelihood of targeted attacks using the methods, if not the tools, used in cyber-attacks on the open Internet.
Scope
Proposals are expected to prepare, design and/or demonstrate a Cyber Physical Test lab with hardware and software tools supporting expertise focusing on generation of effective tests for common and relevant Cyber Physical systems, products and components with realistic data from a relevant use case.
It must provide capabilities for cybersecurity analysis of the actual and planned system architecture, including a demonstrated threat analysis of a selected system or component. Based on this analysis, the architecture can be updated in order to increase the security of the system to an appropriate level.
Integrated tools for automated cost-efficient cyber validation tests based on requirements indicated by international standards may be included. The tools should be able to emulate system being tested, store detailed configurations, conduct automated testing and validation of military architecture, store the results and be able to repeat testing periodically in a cost-effective manner, considering system reconfiguration and extension during the lifecycle and the updated threat landscape.
The proposals are expected to contribute to enhancing cybersecurity in the Member States and Norway critical digital information infrastructure- solutions and services within security, encryption and communication systems, from strategic to tactical level.
Types of Activities
The following types of activities are eligible for this topic:

Activities that aim to create, underpin and improve knowledge, products and technologies, including disruptive technologies, which can achieve significant effects in the area of defence (generating knowledge)
Activities that aim to increase interoperability and resilience, including secured production and exchange of data, to master critical defence technologies, to strengthen the security of supply or to enable the effective exploitation of results for defence products and technologies (integrating knowledge)
Studies, such as feasibility studies to explore the feasibility of new or upgraded products, technologies, processes, services and solutions
Design of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology as well as the definition of the technical specifications on which such design has been developed, including partial tests for risk reduction in an industrial or representative environment
System prototyping of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology (prototype)
Testing of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology
Qualification of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology
Certification of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology
Development of technologies or assets increasing efficiency across the life cycle of defence products and technologies
Funding Information
The available call budget is EUR 27 000 000.

Expected Impact
The outcome should have a major impact on the Member States and Norway’ economy and cybersecurity cooperation, through:

Establishing state-of-the-art test facility and competences, procedures and forensic software for Cyber Critical systems.
Enabling IoT third parties to be used in a more secure, effective and economical way both in legacy, and novel systems.
Decreasing implementation cost and shortening implementation time for advanced cyber security systems for the cooperating Member States and associated countries.
Enabling the use of secure third-party components in Cyber Critical systems, leading to increased flexibility and competitiveness for the cooperating Member States and associated countries.
Contributing to the certification of systems and to the EU Cybersecurity Certification framework, including contributing to enhance “security by design” of new systems and identify threats related to the supply chain.
Eligibility Criteria
In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:

be legal entities (public or private bodies)
be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
non-EU countries
have their executive management structure established in eligible countries
must not be subject to control by a non-associated third country or nonassociated third-country entity
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