Programme Category
Programme Name
Programme Description
Digital Europe Programme is the first EU programme that aims to accelerate the recovery and drive the digital transformation of Europe.
Worth €7.6 billion (in current prices), the Programme is a part of the next long-term EU budget, (the Multiannual Financial Framework), and it covers 2021 to 2027. It will provide funding for projects in five crucial areas: supercomputing, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, advanced digital skills, and ensuring the wide use of digital technologies across the economy and society.
The Programme is fine-tuned to fill the gap between the research of digital technologies and their deployment, and to bring the results of research to the market – for the benefit of Europe’s citizens and businesses, and in particular SMEs. Investments under the Digital Europe programme supports the Union’s twin objectives of a green transition and digital transformation and strengthens the Union’s resilience and strategic autonomy.
Identifier Code
Call
Summary
The objective is to enable European cybersecurity actors to take advantage of these new breakthroughs, improving detection and prevention capabilities, efficiency, scalability, and facilitating data sharing and regulatory compliance.
Detailed Call Description
Innovative technologies should allow for the processing of larger amounts of data, automating real-time pattern recognition, log analysis, vulnerability scanning, while enabling security professionals to focus on higher level interpretation of data and response decisions. They should allow organisations to deploy solutions and larger scale, and in increasingly complex environments.
Activities should fortify cybersecurity capabilities using breakthrough technologies, encompassing various aspects of cybersecurity. This involves uptake and integration for the deployment of novel tools, systems and services for threat detection, incident response, malware defence, vulnerability management, data protection and so forth. In one or more of the following topics should be addressed:
- Real-time Monitoring and Incident Response: ensuring the swift identification and response to security incidents through continuous network monitoring, alert generation, and automated response mechanisms.
- Malware Defence and Analysis: mitigating malware threats by analysing code behaviour, scrutinizing network traffic, and assessing file characteristics, thereby reducing opportunities for attackers to exploit vulnerabilities.
- Proactive Vulnerability Management: identifying and addressing weaknesses proactively through automated vulnerability scanning and penetration testing to address potential threats before they can be exploited.
- Data Protection and Anomaly Detection: safeguarding sensitive data by scrutinizing access patterns and identifying abnormal behaviour to mitigate data breaches and protect critical information.
- Incident investigation to help uncover cause, scope and impact of security incidents or breaches that have occurred.
- Data Utilisation with Privacy: enabling organisations to harness data for analysis and insights while preserving data security and privacy through techniques such as anonymisation and de-identification.
By addressing such issues, the cybersecurity resilience of organisations should be enhanced, improving overall cybersecurity posture, encompassing various aspects such as threat detection, incident response, and vulnerability management.
In well justified cases, access requests to the EuroHPC high performance computing infrastructure could be granted.
The systems, tools and services developed under this topic, where relevant, will be made available for licencing to National and/or Cross-Border SOC platforms under favourable market conditions.
This action aims at the deployment of key technologies in cybersecurity, in particular also in the context of securing national authorities, providers of critical infrastructures and essential services. As this involves the handling of cyber incidents, malware and management of vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious actors, the deployment of such technologies must be protected against possible dependencies and vulnerabilities in cybersecurity to pre-empt foreign influence and control.
Call Total Budget
Financing percentage by EU or other bodies / Level of Subsidy or Loan
50% and 75% for SMEs
Maximum grant amount: €3.000.000 – €5.000.000 per project (but other amounts are not excluded)
Thematic Categories
- Research, Technological Development and Innovation
Eligibility for Participation
- Central Government
- Legal Entities
- Other Beneficiaries
- Private Bodies
- Researchers/Research Centers/Institutions
- Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)
- State-owned Enterprises
Eligibility For Participation Notes
In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
- be legal entities (public or private bodies)
- be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
- EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs)
- EEA countries (Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein)
Please be aware that all topics of this call are subject to restrictions due to security, therefore entities must not be directly or indirectly controlled from a country that is not an eligible country. All entities 11 will have to fill in and submit a declaration on ownership and control.
Moreover:
- participation in any capacity (as beneficiary, affiliated entity, associated partner, subcontractor or recipient of financial support to third parties) is limited to entities established in and controlled from eligible countries
- project activities (included subcontracted work) must take place in eligible countries
(see section geographic location below and section 10) - the Grant Agreement may provide for IPR restrictions (see section 10).
Targeted stakeholders: The target stakeholders are technology companies, especially SMEs, working to provide and support other private and public organisations with cyber threat detection and CTI feeds. Submissions from consortia, despite not mandatory, will positively contribute to the impact of the action.
Consortium composition: no restrictions
Call Opening Date
Call Closing Date
National Contact Point(s)
Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy
Directorate of Research and Innovation
Eleana Gabriel
Telephone: +357 22 691918
Email: egabriel@dmrid.gov.cy