Preparing The Second Round Of Commercial And Application Demonstrators

RomyGeneral News

11 March 2022

Preparing The Second Round Of Commercial And Application Demonstrators

One of CyberSec4Europe’s principal goals is to address today’s European cybersecurity challenges across seven commercial and application areas: open banking, supply chain, privacy-preserving identity management, incident reporting, maritime transport, medical data exchange and smart cities.

The main benefit for EU citizens is for this collaboration between industry and academia to foster pragmatic research and development that will produce novel solutions to those challenges.

The demonstrator use cases are CyberSec4Europe’s means of achieving this ambitious goal. A demonstrator is a prototype of a privacy and security by design cybersecurity solution to one or more real-world challenges. In addition to being developed with an eye on security and privacy, the demonstrators are also compliant with important EU regulations, such as PSD2 and the GDPR. The demonstrators cater to the complex requirements of the digital single market, as well as the security of European citizens and society.

The primary activity for each use case – and there are usually several use cases for each sector – is the design and development of an appropriate demonstrator. These activities are divided in two parallel phases split equally over the course of the project, each delivering three reports. The first two phase 1 reports, on requirements analysis and specification and set up, describe the goals, workflows, and building blocks required for the demonstrators derived as a result of many discussions with stakeholders and industry partners.

CyberSec4Europe’s latest report, the second in phase 2 of this activity, Specification and Set-up of Demonstration Case Phase 2, builds on the previous work by finalising each demonstrator use case specification, and presenting an overview of how the demonstrators benefit their respective sectors. It focuses on formalising the use case workflows and their interactions which define 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 pieced together to produce a complete picture. For each demonstrator, the use cases are the interlocking pieces, and the demonstrator is the final assembled big picture. With this analogy in mind, this latest report is the instruction manual that shows how the pieces are put together to compose the picture.

It structures the presentation in two parts: specification and set-up. The specification of a demonstrator presents its workflow with exhaustive step-by-step descriptions. A demonstrator set-up shows how its promised functionalities were implemented, its software architecture and, in general, how it works. The deliverable also maps the demonstrators to the assets produced during our work with the separate research and development of the project’s assets, indicating those that will be integrated into its development cycle. Collaboration between these activities is mutually beneficial: one produces technology assets that satisfy the demonstrator requirements; whereas, the demonstrator use cases ensure that CyberSec4Europe’s innovative technologies are integrated into real-world commercially-viable application scenarios.

Finally, because this latest report is a revision of the work carried out in the parallel phase 1 report, a section of the report reviews the work on the demonstrators up until today, describing the improvements made since the start of the second cycle of CyberSec4Europe, and highlighting lessons learned and making recommendations for the future.

 

Alessandro Sforzin

NEC Laboratories Europe