Cyber Security Lab of the National Research Council of Italy

The Cyber Lab of Italy offers research, training, education and communication to boost cybersecurity efforts across Europe, as the Institute of Informatics and Telematics (IIT-CNR) explain here

The Cyber Lab was established in 2017 to contribute to the national and international security ecosystem. The lab covers research, training and dissemination activities. The Cyber Lab covers research activities, training and education, networking and dissemination aimed at consolidating the lab as the main stakeholder in Europe.

It covers several research areas:

• Cyber risk management: Assessing the risk level of complex cyber infrastructures and defining the management of such risks.
• Cyber protection: Methodologies and techniques to protect the cyber world from attacks. It covers topics, ranging from IoT systems to large application domains such as smart grids.
• Cybercrime and forensics: This is the techniques for studying criminal activities in the cyber world and providing means for managing evidence to be used in forensic activities.
• Cyber intelligence: The strategies devoted to the collection and analysis of information from visible and dark web (including social media) for the protection of society.
• Cyberattacks: This area involves the study of how cyberattack methods could be used to harm the cyber infrastructures at a national level.

In particular, the researchers currently coordinate two European Projects:

• The European Network for Cyber Security (NECS) addresses the training and development of a European talent pool to help implement and support the European cybersecurity strategy as highlighted in the EC’s Digital Agenda. Today, it is more important than ever to have researchers that combine a strong academic foundation with practical experiences, technological expertise with an awareness of the socio-economic and legal context and conviction to furthering research with an entrepreneurial spirit. The four-year NECS project for a cybersecurity research and training network makes a significant contribution towards meeting the increased demand for human expertise in this critical field. NECS fosters a multi-sector/multi-disciplinary approach that is absolutely necessary for coherently tackling all cybersecurity needs as recognised by the Network and Information Security (NIS) platform that has been established by the EU in order to develop a public/private cooperation strategy.
• C3ISP’s mission is to define a collaborative and confidential information sharing, analysis and protection framework as a service for cybersecurity management. C3ISP innovation is the possibility to share information in a flexible and controllable manner inside a collaborative, multi-domain environment to improve detection of cyber threats and response capabilities, yet preserving the confidentiality of the shared information. The C3ISP paradigm includes collect, analyse, inform and react.
• SPARTA is a novel cybersecurity competence network, with the objective to collaboratively develop and implement top-tier research and innovation actions. Strongly guided by concrete challenges forming an ambitious Cybersecurity Research & Innovation Roadmap, SPARTA will tackle hard innovation challenges, leading the way in building transformative capabilities and forming a world-leading cybersecurity competence network across the EU. Four initial research and innovation programmes will push the boundaries to deliver advanced solutions to cover emerging issues, with applications from basic human needs to economic activities, technologies and sovereignty.

The lab covers usual education and training activities, as well as awareness and communication. The Cyber Lab runs, with the University of Pisa, a master in cybersecurity offering several courses from cloud security to cyber intelligence.

As a summation of the activities, the CNR Lab runs an observatory in cybersecurity where several services (often, the output of previous research projects) are offered in order to increase awareness and preparedness for all the main stakeholders, in particular, civil society and SMEs. The observatory enables all interested parties to take advantage of the skills and the result of the laboratory activities through the publication of constantly updated information, documents,  and services useful for knowing, understanding and reacting to cybersecurity threats.

Some of the services offered within the lab include – identifying levels of vulnerability, threat characteristics, studying, refining and implementing techniques and methodologies of network, systems and information security in order to increase the reliability and resilience of the systems.

Please note: This is a commercial profile

Fabio Martinelli

Research Director

Institute of Informatics and

Telematics (IIT-CNR)

Tel: +39 050 315 3425

Fabio.Martinelli@iit.cnr.it

www.cybersecurityosservatorio.it/en