Deadline: 24-Nov-22
The European Commission (EC) is offering grants for Cyber and Information Warfare Toolbox.
Objectives
- The continuously and rapidly increasing flow of information in the information environment, facilitated through cyber capabilities, is a well-established fact. They are witnessing an increasing number of malicious actions targeting the information environment. In the more and more digitalized battlespace, the Cyber and Information domains become decisive to anticipate and manage conflicts in the full spectrum of threat activities from sub-threshold interference to open warfare.
- Threats posed by new and evolving cyber and hybrid tools (e.g., disinformation, deep fakes) are fully part of Cyber and Information Warfare. These threats need to be addressed with appropriate holistic resilience measures including detection and appropriate countermeasures. Cyber and Information Warfare system performance, in terms of total defence effectiveness and cooperation in cyber defence as referred in the EU Capability Development Plan Priorities, could be improved.
Scope: Proposals are expected to address development of a European coherent library of software configurable components to easily integrate in Cyber and Information Warfare systems. This requires capabilities in detection, analysis, fusion and threat targeting to support activities of Cyber and Operational Centres for operational use cases (e.g., attacks against deployed forces in operations; attacks aiming to destabilize one and/or several European countries). Various relevant technologies processing multi-sources data for Cyber and Information Warfare operations needs to be addressed. In addition, enabling items such as standardization, data exchanges rules, multi-source fusion applications, AI-based analytics, methods & tools for integration, qualification in defence systems should be covered. The disinformation phenomenon includes also cultural and social aspects (so called “social science & humanity”) that may be studied by multidisciplinary teams to provide a holistic perspective.
Types of Activities
The following types of activities are eligible for this topic:
- Activities that aim to create, underpin and improve knowledge, products and technologies, including disruptive technologies, which can achieve significant effects in the area of defence (generating knowledge)
- Activities that aim to increase interoperability and resilience, including secured production and exchange of data, to master critical defence technologies, to strengthen the security of supply or to enable the effective exploitation of results for defence products and technologies (integrating knowledge)
- Studies, such as feasibility studies to explore the feasibility of new or upgraded products, technologies, processes, services and solutions
- Design of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology as well as the definition of the technical specifications on which such design has been developed, including partial tests for risk reduction in an industrial or representative environment
- System prototyping of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology
- Testing of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology
- Qualification of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology
- Certification of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology
- Development of technologies or assets increasing efficiency across the life cycle of defence products and technologies
Funding Information
The available call budget is EUR 33 000 000.
Expected Impact
The outcome is expected to contribute to:
- Optimizing the development and integration of analytics in Cyber and Information Warfare systems with the possibility to decrease cost;
- Increasing the European technological sovereignty in the field of Cyber and Information Warfare applications based on AI;
- Increasing of the overall Cyber and Information Warfare system performance as new technologies will give better results in terms of total defence effectiveness;
- Gain on costs, availability and interoperability by optimizing the development and integration of analytics in Cyber and Information Warfare systems and capitalizing at European level Cyber and Information Warfare assets.
Eligibility Criteria
In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
- be legal entities (public or private bodies)
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be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
- EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
- non-EU countries
- have their executive management structure established in eligible countries
- must not be subject to control by a non-associated third country or nonassociated third-country entity.
For more information, visit European Commission.
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