Call: Value-sensitive technological innovation in Cybersecurity

The primary aims of the Secure Societies Challenge are:

• to enhance the resilience of our society against natural and man-made disasters, ranging from the development of new crisis management tools to communication interoperability, and to develop novel solutions for the protection of critical infrastructure;
• to fight crime and terrorism ranging from new forensic tools to protection against explosives;
• to improve border security, ranging from improved maritime border protection to supply chain security and to support the Union's external security policies including through conflict prevention and peace building;
• and to provide enhanced cyber-security, ranging from secure information sharing to new assurance models

The European Strategy for Cybersecurity highlights a set of actions to be implemented by the European Commission to "…develop the industrial and technological resources for cybersecurity…", "… promoting a Single Market for cybersecurity products…", and "… fostering R&D investments…". This call will be one of the instrument to reach these aims.

Cyber-security is a multi-faceted issue (involving critical economic and civilian stakes; cybercrime; defence; fundamental rights protection; norms of behaviour). The proposed activities in this domain address the economic and societal dimension of security and privacy in the digital ecosystem, for the purposes of ensuring the well-functioning of the internal market. This work contributes to the efforts being done in the other areas relevant to cybersecurity.

Securing and increasing the trust in the digital society must be our central concern. It entails preventing cyber-attacks on any component of the digital society (networks, access devices, IT services, ….) no matter what their nature or origin; as well as protecting physical (e.g. critical infrastructures) or intangible assets (e.g. finances, intellectual property, privacy). As a consequence this call addresses the technology to secure the infrastructure (e.g. networks), hardware (e.g. access devices), services (e.g. cloud computing), components (e.g. RFID), software (e.g. operating systems, web-browsers), etc… against accidental or malevolent use. As cybersecurity is cross-domain the call will provide cybersecurity whatever the application or domain (mobile, eCommerce…), or societal challenge (e.g. health, energy, smart cities, …).

This Call will thus focus on demonstrating the viability and maturity of state-of-the-art security, privacy and trust solutions that have been tested in a laboratory environment. The intention is that after this validation phase they will find a wide up take in the market. Proving that the security concepts, processes and solutions work in a real life environment, in large scale demonstrators and directly involving end users who would ultimately benefit the most from the outcome, should increase the prospects for an ICT security market and demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of security. This in turn will reduce the risks of a negative economic impact due to a cyber-incident. However, there is still a large number of unresolved cybersecurity, privacy and trust issues that necessitate longer term research. Constantly new questions come up due to the evolution of ICT or the usage made thereof. Digital security is an issue cutting across all ICT technology, components, applications or services. Generic research is thus needed addressing those more fundamental and ubiquitous questions. Therefore, this call is complementary to the Cybersecurity and Trustworthy ICT activities supported under the "Information and Communication (ICT)' theme of the 'Leadership in Enabling and Industrial Technologies' (LEIT) pillar of H2020 where those longer term issues are addressed. 

New digital technologies are all around us but their impact on society is often difficult to assess, let alone predict. The rapid development and expansion of the digital ecosystem confronts society with numerous challenges to ensure trust and confidence of citizens in and the legitimacy of highly complex, dynamic and hyper-connected systems.

As recognized in the EU Cybersecurity Strategy the same norms, principles and values that the EU upholds offline, should also apply online. The challenge is to define what is needed to ensure a flourishing information society which offers safety and security and at the same time respects Europe's fundamental values and rights.

It is therefore essential to ensure that new and innovative cybersecuirty technologies are designed to incorporate European values and fundamental rights, which include autonomy, equality, privacy, combined with fairness and accountability and ensure the 'right' level of control individuals can exercise over their actions and the technology they utilize. Often, these values might be in competition with one another.

In this context, it is also crucial to understand the role of the public and the private sector concerning the acceptance and acceptability of digital technologies in a networked environment in order to allow citizens to make informed and responsible choices regarding innovative products and services leading to a strong European market for innovative and effective cybersecurity technology.

Proposals are encouraged to engage with public security end-users and/or private end users.

Link to the National Contact Point Finder.