#	Pagina
attuale pagina	/open-h2020/projects/210222/results.html

Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FORTIKA (FORTIKA - Cyber Security Accelerator for trusted SMEs IT Ecosystems)

Teaser

Summary

FORTIKA addresses the issue of the ever-increasing cyber security threats in recent years. Cybersecurity incidents cause major economic damage to European businesses and the economy at large. Such incidents undermine the trust of citizens and enterprises in the digital society. Theft of commercial trade secrets, business information and personal data, disruption of services - including essential ones - and of infrastructures results in economic losses of hundreds of billions of euros each year. Threats from cyber space directly affect the small business community safety and the proper functioning of the state, economy and society, and have a profound negative impact on citizensâ€™ daily lives. Cybersecurity threats may have serious consequences for citizensâ€™ fundamental rights and for society at large. The above findings imply the importance of cybersecurity for the society.
FORTIKAâ€™s vision is built on 3 pillars. FORTIKA aims to: (1) minimise the exposure of small and medium sized businesses to cyber security risks and threats, and (2) help them successfully respond to cyber security incidents, (3) while relieving them from all unnecessary and costly efforts of identifying, acquiring and using the appropriate cybersecurity solutions.
To fulfil its vision, the project adopts a security by design hybrid approach that adequately integrates hardware and software with business needs and behavioural patterns at individual and organisational level, to:
a) Introduce a hardware-enabled middleware security layer as add-on to existing network gateways;
b) Orientate small business users to trusted cybersecurity services (through FORTIKAâ€™s marketplace) packaged to tailored solutions for each enterprise and further extended to accommodate security intelligence and to encourage security-friendly behavioural and organisational changes.
Ultimately, FORTIKA proposes a resilient overall cyber security solution that can be easily tailored and adjusted to the versatile and dynamically changing needs of small businesses. To this end, the project ambitiously aims to make systematic and extensive use of the existing service and product portfolio of security solution providers across Europe. Finally, the introduction of a software-defined smart ecosystem in â€œFORTIKA Marketplaceâ€ will provide the feature of a light mode solution, which will offer virtualized security services (with minimum downloading requirements). From their perspective, users (i.e. SMEs) may utilize a variety of services and share profiling information with the service providers in return for tailored security services aligned with their actual needs. FORTIKA Cybersecurity framework will be evaluated through five major types of SMEs and will be supported from 2 local SME/ICT clusters and 1 EU alliance.

Work performed

The FORTIKA project completed successfully its first year of implementation. During the reporting period the consortium developed and submitted in due time all anticipated deliverables (a total of 21 deliverables). According to the Grant Agreement, 14 Milestones have been defined in the framework of FORTIKA. During the reporting period, FORTIKA achieved 6 out of 14 Milestones.
FORTIKA achieved progress in the following main fields: 1) The horizontal activities, 2) The legal and ethical methodological approach, 3) Design of the FORTIKA architecture and components, 4) Development of system modules.
The horizontal activities include the Project Management, activities on Dissemination and Exploitation and the Ethics Requirements. A solid regulatory frame for project guidance was established, by means of 3 key deliverables: The Project Reference Manual & Quality Plan, the Data Management Plan and the IPR Management Plan & Report.
The main technical outcome by the end of the reporting period is the successful completion of the entire foreseen design tasks.
On Month 10, the consortium launched efforts for the development of FORTIKA system components, as planned in the Grant Agreement. By the end of the first year of FORTIKA an initial set of components have been developed and passed early tests.

Final results

FORTIKA is expected to pioneer and achieve progress beyond the state of the art, in a number of technological areas relevant to its aim. These areas are the following:
1. FPGA processor â€“ CPU Enhancement Module â€“ Middleware Board
2. BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) / BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) Access Control â€“ Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC).
3. Social Engineering Attack Recognition Systems (SEARS)
4. Risk analysis, modeling and level assessment
5. Real-time Network Traffic Analysis
6. Homomorphic encryption
7. Data minimization
The FORTIKA project will create the following results:
a. A body of thorough knowledge regarding the landscape of cybersecurity for SMEs.
b. A sound design methodology.
c. An operational, tested and mature technology consisting of the FORTIKA accelerator modules and architecture.
d. A body of knowledge regarding the efficiency, suitability and performance of the above methodology and FORTIKA technology under real-world conditions in the FORTIKA pilots
e. An adequate set of tools for promoting the FORTIKA solution into large numbers of possible future users.
f. A set of proven and verified business models that will empower the elaboration of business plans for new users (SMEs) interested in applying the FORTIKA technology in a sustainable way.
FORTIKA will contribute to the expected impacts set out in the work programme. It also has positive impact in terms of improving innovation capacity and the integration of new knowledge.
FORTIKA has a direct economic impact on the European cybersecurity industry and an indirect on the European economy. The commercialisation of the proposed solution will generate revenues from the provision of the FORTIKA technology. In addition, 3rd party cybersecurity solution providers will see their revenues increased by selling their services through the marketplace. The consortium carried out an estimation which confirms that the size of the FORTIKA targeted market is: â‚¬1,5bn to â‚¬2,5bn.
FORTIKA will have impact on employment since it will create new jobs to the European cybersecurity industry, research organisations and higher education establishments.
FORTIKA value proposition offers to SMEs high level of cybersecurity at low cost and with a minimal effort. It allows them to concentrate their limited resources on their core operations and thrive. This affects not only the individual companies or their clients, suppliers and partners, but has a wider societal effect and particularly on the welfare of the European society being at local or at European-wide level. For instance, industrial espionage practiced by competitors (most of the times non-Europeans) can affect employment at local level and European-wide if such practices are performed on a systematic and broader scale.
FORTIKAâ€™s solution aims to eliminate such practices along with data breaches and privacy violations. Similar effects apply to the relationship with suppliers and partners. Not to mention the impact of security incidents on the moral of the personnel of the companies.
At the end of the reporting period the above described dynamics regarding the societal impacts of the project were not yet deployed because the FORTIKA pilots did not commence yet. The pilots will launch on month 18 of the project.