For modern society, it is important to be able to rely on the availability and integrity of digital systems and the confidentiality of data. Cybersecurity is an important prerequisite for minimising the likelihood of damage from for instance, outages.
In addition, it also protects against malicious actors both domestic and from abroad. Knowledge development and innovations are urgently needed for a safe, resilient and autonomous digital Netherlands. This call is part of the strategies of the KIA Digitalisation.
About the call
The call stems from the Knowledge and Innovation Covenant (KIC) and follows the priorities of the Security, Key Technologies and Digitisation Knowledge and Innovation Agendas, which in this call act jointly in the field of cybersecurity.
In the projects, researchers work closely with public and private parties. This takes advantage of opportunities to strengthen the digital resilience of the Netherlands in practice. The various private parties invest 1.5 million in the research. NWO funds these studies for nearly 9 million.
The Awarded Projects:
* EGOS: Effective Governance for cybersecurity and Online Safety
dr. ir. C. Hernandez Ganan, Delft University of Technology.
The internet's growth brings both information access and risks like malicious and harmful content. Regulations like the EU's Digital Services Act aim to make online spaces safer. The EGOS project tackles these challenges by studying hosting providers and online platforms security posture, evaluating regulations' effectiveness, and developing better cybersecurity measures. It focuses on the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in spreading harmful content and aims to detect and prevent it. EGOS also supports audits of online platforms to ensure they follow rules and don't spread harmful and malicious content.
* NEPTARGOS: Nautical Empowerment for Proactive Threat Analysis and Resilience with Guardian Oversight Systems
prof. dr. W.J.A.M. van den Heuvel, Tilburg University
NEPTARGOS project is an interdisciplinary action and joint effort of universities, civil society organizations, research institutions, social scientists, and large companies that seeks to enhance cyber knowledge and understanding of the North Sea maritime infrastructure, fostering security-by-design and resilience-by-design on the modern cyber-physical systems of this maritime environment. In that context, the project will research, develop, validate, and promote an adaptive and holistic Cyber-Physical Security (CPS) governance framework that will foster the design, implementation and enforcement of effective, evidence-based, scenario-centric measures and policies against adversarial cyber-physical attacks.
* Improved Secure Semiconductor Evaluation (ISSE): From Lab Techniques to Legal Frameworks
dr. K. Papagiannopoulos, University of Amsterdam
The KIC-ISSE project stands for Improved Secure Semiconductor Evaluations and aims to make the electronics in our everyday life more secure. To achieve this, KIC-ISSE tries to address the modern technical challenges of automation and simulation in cybersecurity. Concurrently, it wants to help security experts to get properly trained and reach their full potential in hacking electronic devices. Finally, the project tries to understand the complex global supply chain of secure devices and evaluations, the legal, economic, and geopolitical dimensions behind it and how to improve the resilience of our digital infrastructure.
* Building on Digital Identity
dr. R.J.W. Sluis-Thiescheffer, HAN University of Applied Sciences
Since 2022 Digital Identity is a strategic topic for the EU, for digital sovereignty. The Netherlands plays a leading role on this topic: researchers developed a digital wallet app called Yivi that lets you share only the information needed, keeping your privacy protected. This project uses this existing technology to build new helpful apps. Imagine easily signing documents online, having trusted chats on social media, or even voting digitally. To make these apps user-friendly and legal, the team includes designers and lawyers. This project is about secure technology that makes people's lives easier and safer online.
* From ‘what went wrong?’ to ‘what works well?’: Using Safety 2 principles to develop new cybersecurity solutions
dr. T. van Steen, Leiden University
Cybersecurity often concerns itself with what goes wrong, an attack that could have been prevented, or an aftermath that could have been less impactful. We seem to ignore the fact that often, things go right. That attacks can be repelled or can be stopped before the damage they do becomes too large. In this project, we investigate what we can learn from organisations that are successful in terms of cybersecurity on the levels of end-users, teams, and organisations.
* Find2Fix: reducing software errors using transparent AI
dr. ir. S.E. Verwer, Delft University of Technology
In this project we will build the first open-source Find2Fix pipeline, focused on explaining the root-cause of an error and why a suggested fix works. We will explain errors and fixes to developers without requiring extensive security knowledge, publish it open source, and build a Dutch start-up that makes it easy to use and brings it to market. With this effort, we aim to increase our digital autonomy.
NWO-KIC: innovation programmes in the knowledge and innovation covenant
NWO develops innovation programmes that focus on societal challenges in the Netherlands. These programmes aim to have an impact on the economy, people and society. The focus is on cooperation between knowledge institutions, private parties and the government. The results thus contribute to the realisation of economic opportunities. It is therefore essential that companies invest in every research project.