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Ethical dilemmas related to cybersecurity

10th Dec 2020
Cybersecurity is the opposite of cybercrime; it deals with protecting people, their money and data. Despite being an undoubtedly positive thing, it causes some major concerns of ethical nature, which emerge and develop along with the development of cyberspace and online services.

Years ago, when cyberspace and the Internet had just started to gain their immense popularity, the main ethical dilemmas mostly concerned the broadly understood privacy of the users. The privacy-related ethical issues emerge at almost every level, starting from the most general, national one. The dilemma here is about striking the balance between securing the country’s assets as a whole and respecting the privacy of citizens; this issue mostly addresses the means of surveillance [1][2]. Then, there is the level of companies and organizations that process users’ data. Can they be trusted with protecting the data from leaking or being stolen? Could the user be sure the company will not sell their data to oth...
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SPARTA Workshop: How to get privileged access to groundbreaking Cybersecurity innovations and research?

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ONLINE

This SPARTA WORKSHOP will be held on the last Cybersecurity Breakfast of the year, by our partner Security Made in Luxembourg!

In this event, will be presented the key advancements, including the SPARTA Roadmap or the SPARTA Partnerships, as well as demonstrations of breakthrough capabilities developed by its Programs.

The objective of such a workshop is to explain how companies can become associates in this program and get direct access to research and innovation.

AGENDA:

9.00 Opening speech – Bertrand Lathoud, Head of the Cybersecurity Competence Center Luxembourg

9.05 Keynote presentation of SPARTA Achievements, by Florent Kirchner, SPARTA Strategic Director

9.20 Keynote The SPARTA Roadmap, by Prof. Thomas Jensen, Thomas Jensen - INRIA

9.35 Keynote presentation of SPARTA Associates program, by Fabio Martinelli, SPARTA Partnerships Director

9.50 Roundtable session with:

Géraud Guilloud, Advisor - European R&D and Innovation Support - LuxInnovation

Florent Kir...
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CONVERGENCE: when the legislation and the four European cybersecurity pilots converge

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Since 2019 the European Union is funding four innovative projects to pilot the proposed legislation on a European cybersecurity competence centre and network of cybersecurity expertise. As the legislation edges ever closer to approval by the European Parliament, the four pilot projects, CyberSec4Europe, SPARTA, ECHO and CONCORDIA are organising for the first time a single online collaborative event, CONVERGENCE, from 9-11 December, to highlight the joint progress made and to bring together the most important personalities and organisations addressing cybersecurity in Europe.

The event opens on the evening of 9 December with welcome addresses from the four pilot coordinators followed by a panel discussion featuring four distinguished speakers who will address the status and the impact on the cybersecurity community of the new regulation:


Rasmus Andresen, Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur Cybersecurity Competence Network Centre Regulation
Andreas Könen, Head of Depa...
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WEBINAR: European Cybersecurity Challenges

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The free webinar on European Cybersecurity Challenges, 30 November, from 10h00 to 12h00 is promoted by the Mission of Switzerland to the EU, SwissCore and the National Research Council of Italy.

The webinar will outline the European Comission aims to improve the EU’s Cybersecurity capacity with a Cybersecurity Competence Center (CCN) and by integrating cybersecurity into the upcoming European knowledge programmes. It will discuss how we can best unlock the potential of innovation in promoting security in the digital sphere and how collaborative infrastructures, partnerships and networks can advance these goals.

It will present the SPARTA cybersecurity competence network and the opportunities it offers for Swiss cybersecurity actors to participate and foster European Colaborations. The webinar will also highlight the strenght and contributions of Swiss academia and Swiss innovation ecosystem.

Find more information abou the event here, as well as the detailed provisional programme....
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Innovation governance based on the diversity of factors that Shaped the Development of the SPARTA T-SHARK Program

22nd Nov 2020
T-SHARK aims to develop and validate methodological, organisational and technological solutions, thereby extending cybersecurity in order to achieve a comprehensive organisation of security functions that focus on threat prediction and full-spectrum cybersecurity awareness, providing high situational awareness and timely warning of threats.  Significantly, T-SHARK and 19 of its partners have focused their primary efforts on the question of delivering full-spectrum cybersecurity awareness with the goal of informing decision and policymakers on broad, long-term issues.

Activities within the Program have been divided into two main streams. 

The first deals with several technology-based developments identified by separate partners or joint teams (defined as Sub-cases). These teams engage in information exchange, develop solutions based on data gathering activities and development of visual analytics capabilities that enable the integration of outputs arising from Sub-cases. 

 The sec...
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Ethical, Societal and Legal Questions in Cybersecurity Research

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Ethical, Societal and Legal Questions in Cybersecurity Research is the theme for the free online workshop promoted by SPARTA WP2, on the 19th November 2020, from 12:00 to 16:30 (CET), at zoom https://zoom.us/j/91005517457 .

The workshop will be divided into three complementary sessions, and a wide range of speakers. See the agenda bellow!



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New arenas for collaboration: EU-HYBNET and T-Shark

28th Oct 2020
SPARTA T-Shark research programme

The SPARTA consortium is responsible for executing four research programmes that tackle ambitious challenges in cybersecurity, representing major opportunities for enhancing Europe’s strategic autonomy and the Digital Single Market. These programmes account for more than half of the efforts deployed in SPARTA. Although programme leaders have different profiles, all are nevertheless experienced senior experts.

One of the four research programmes, T-Shark (Full Spectrum Situational Awareness), is coordinated by the Lithuanian Cyber Crime Center of Excellence for Training, Research and Education (L3CE). 

The cyber threat landscape in today’s world is changing dramatically. A majority of organisations face rising demands to employ new approaches, operational models and innovative technologies to ensure national and international stability and security. 

The key objective of the T-Shark programme is to develop and validate methodological, organisatio...
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Cyber competence development ecosystem started by SPARTA and further explored by REWIRE

19th Oct 2020
A few years ago, the EC launched 4 pilot projects, namely SPARTA, CONCORDIA, ECHO and CyberSec4Europe in an attempt to take a leading role in developing an EU cybersecurity competence ecosystem. These pilot projects bring together more than 160 partners, including large companies, SMEs, universities and cybersecurity research institutes from 26 EU Member States.

The four pilots have been asked to collaborate and coordinate their activities to address the most critical challenges facing EU: i.e. increasing shortages of cybersecurity professionals, availability of relevant training and certification programs that have been tailored to specific sector requirements, etc.

During the past 18 months of SPARTA implementation, a team of experts extensively analysed the state of the knowledge regarding cyber skills management, skill gaps in industry, skills requirements, adequate provision of sectoral training, cybersecurity skills frameworks, and proposed a way forward with the development...
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Strategic Research and Innovation Roadmap: A Learning Road

19th Oct 2020
The Roadmap Committee has designed instruments and conducted activities that push the evolution of the SPARTA Strategic Research and Innovation (SRI) roadmap to become the main guideline for decision makers to develop strategies to strengthen the EU’s cybersecurity capacity, to close cyber skill gaps and to address emerging challenges appropriately. With SPARTA’s mission-oriented, agile and open approach, the SPARTA SRI will shape the cybersecurity technologies required to establish and maintain a European Strategic Digital Autonomy.

The SPARTA SRI has been successfully presented and discussed with SPARTA associates and friends during the digital Brokerage Event that took place in June. Furthermore, the SPARTA Days #4 collocated with the EuroS&P cybersecurity conference, have been leveraged to present the roadmap challenges and visions to a varied academic audience. The rather specialized audience allowed to present the roadmap achievements with technical details on the technol...
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CAPE & EclipseCon 2020

14th Oct 2020
EclipseCon 2020

SPARTA will be presenting CAPE program - Continuous assessment in polymorphous environments - at the Research Labs exhibit at the virtual EclipseCon 2020, from 19 to 22 October.

The EclipseCon event is a leading conference for developers, architects, and open source business leaders to learn about Eclipse technologies, share best practices, and more!

For more information, visit https://www.eclipsecon.org/2020

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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.