In 2018, the European Commission, through the H2020 programme, launched a call with the aim of bringing together specific specialist expertise, organising and co-funding four pilot projects designed to connect and share cross-sectoral knowledge in order to develop a common European strategy in the field of cybersecurity.

ECHO (an acronym for European network of Cybersecurity centres and competence Hub for innovation and Operations) is one of the four pilot projects. Formally launched on 1 February 2019, it aims to provide an organised and coordinated approach to strengthening Cyber Defence in the European Union, through the creation of a European network of centres of expertise in the field of Cyber Security, thereby contributing to the industrial strategy in this context.

The ECHO project comprises 30 partners including companies, academic institutions and universities from 15 EU Member States.

Since its inception, the European Commission has expressed strong interest in ECHO’s objectives and results, and a direct and stated willingness to participate directly in its various phases of development and implementation of results. In this regard, the Commission has launched and is pursuing a major information campaign, as well as centralised coordination regarding the sharing of objectives and results.

With regard to the project objectives in which Exprivia is involved, the following are highlighted:

Objective 1: Establishment of a Network of research and competence centres on Cyber Security, coordinated through a Central Competence Hub. The Network will be aligned with the work of the main dedicated European agencies and bodies, with a mandate to broaden participation in the work and thus the partner base, including the creation of synergies with partners from the other three projects funded alongside ECHO.

Objective 2: Establishment of a governance model for the ECHO Network, specifically designed to ensure the effective management of its centres of expertise.

Objective 3: Development of an ECHO Multi-sector Assessment Framework, aimed at providing the means to analyse cross-cutting and cross-sectoral challenges and opportunities and to support the development of a Cyber Security Technology Roadmap.

Objective 4: Analysis and derivation of the ECHO Cybersecurity Technology Roadmap, resulting from the application of the Multi-sector Assessment Framework to sectoral, cross-sectoral and cross-cutting challenges in the field of cybersecurity.

Objective 5: Development of an effective and efficient certification model, the ECHO Cybersecurity Certification Scheme, in line with ENISA’s current efforts to establish an EU cybersecurity certification framework that addresses sectoral and cross-sectoral issues.

Objective 6: establishment of an operational ECHO Early Warning System, enabling partners to share incident data and other data relevant to cybersecurity with accredited partners within the ECHO network.

Objective 7: establishment of an operational ECHO Federated Cyber Range, which:

• provides a realistic environment for practical training;
• enables innovative experiments and exercises, research and prototype testing;
• enables the conduct of cybersecurity certification tests.

Partners:

https://echonetwork.eu/partners/