The demonstration cases – one for each of the seven selected sectors – are CyberSec4Europe’s answer to the aforementioned challenges. They are the embodiment of the project’s will to lead Europe’s cybersecurity research and innovation with technology advancements catering to the complex reality of the Digital Single Market, as well as the security of European citizens and society as a whole. A demonstrator is a prototype of a cybersecurity solution, product, or service secure by design. In addition to being developed with an eye on security and privacy, the demonstrators will also be compliant with important EU directives and regulations, such as PSD2 and the GDPR.

The work package activity oversees the demonstrators’ design and development. Over the course of the project’s first year, we pinned down several use cases that serve as the basis of the demonstrators. Our first deliverable D5.1 describes them and analyses their requirements; it presents the results of many discussions with stakeholders and industry partners of each selected sector. The document served as input to the first version of the project’s research roadmap, as well as to the initial set of research guidelines and technologies – also known as assets – that the demonstrators will integrate into their implementations.

CyberSec4Europe’s deliverable Specification and Set-up of Demonstration Case Phase 1 builds upon the work of our first deliverable by further specifying the use cases of each demonstrator and presenting a preliminary overview of what and how the demonstrators plan to increase the cybersecurity resilience of their respective sectors. Whereas we initially focused on identifying their requirements and describing their importance in the context of the selected sectors, this new deliverable concentrates on formalising the use cases’ workflows and their interactions defining the shape of the demonstrators.

Jigsaw puzzles are a useful analogy to understanding the relationship between a demonstrator and its use cases. In a jigsaw puzzle, interlocking pieces are put together to produce the complete picture. In our work package, the use cases are the interlocking pieces and the demonstrator is the picture we want to assemble. With this analogy in mind, our deliverable is the instruction manual that shows how to put the pieces together to compose the picture.

It structures the presentation of the demonstrators in two parts: specification and set-up. A demonstrator’s specification formally analyses its use cases’ workflow with step-by-step descriptions and diagrams. A demonstrator’s set-up shows how its use cases come together to implement its designed functionalities, and explains how the demonstrator will work once its development is complete.

Finally, this report maps the demonstrators to the assets referred to above. This is not a theoretical exercise; a demonstrator maps to only those assets that it will integrate into its prototype during the development cycle. The collaboration between these two work activities is mutually beneficial: one produces assets (i.e., technologies) that satisfy our demonstrators’ requirements; whereas our work package ensures that innovative technologies are integrated into the demonstrators, thus proving that CyberSec4Europe’s research is not only relevant to the Digital Single Market, but also effective in addressing cybersecurity issues in the corresponding sectors worldwide.

 

 

Alessandro Sforzin