21 outcomes and, over 300 scientific publications, and a multistakeholder ecosystem, interconnecting several stakeholders like research, industry, start-ups, public bodies, are examples of achievements of the European CONCORDIA project, which ended the 31st of March. The four years, €16 million project, with an additional 7 millions of industrial funding, covered a wide range of topics, including cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, information security and data protection, certification, and competence building.

"Multiple crises such as the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, climate and energy crises underline the increasing importance of building a secure, trusted and resilient digitally sovereign Europe," said project coordinator Professor Gabi Dreo from the University of the Bundeswehr Munich.

"CONCORDIA has fully achieved its objective of building such an ecosystem, being agile, innovative, and open. The CONCORDIA results will not only provide valuable input to the European Cybersecurity Competence Centre and the network of National Cybersecurity Centres, and with this to the whole European cybersecurity community, but will also work to strengthen and speed up research, development, and especially innovation."

The CONCORDIA project delivers 21 outcomes to help counter the rapidly growing number of complex cyberattacks and the increasing threat landscape. They are divided into six main categories: Policy, Technology Tools, Education, Technology Pilots, and Certification and Research. All the results are now available to the public on the project website.

One of the outputs is a set of strategic recommendations for cybersecurity in Europe published under the title Roadmap for Cybersecurity in Europe. It links various areas such as research and innovation, education, economics and investment, law, and certification and standardization in a holistic way. Until now, interest has focused mainly on cybersecurity's research and development aspects. The new strategy document describes nine fundamental dimensions that affect cybersecurity, showing where the current focus should be. To continuously also gather feedback from the cybersecurity community, the CONCORDIA Monitoring Board has been developed.

Other tools include the KYPO Cyber Range Platform, which Masaryk University developed and, thanks to the project, released as open source in 2020.

"We believe the KYPO Cyber Range Platform is a significant contribution to the cybersecurity community. The open-source cyber range makes hands-on cybersecurity education widely available to universities and organizations in Europe and worldwide," said Jakub Čegan, project coordinator for the Czech Republic from Masaryk University.

"This activity aims to address the great lack of cybersecurity experts by providing a platform for the development and execution of cybersecurity training and exercises." The KYPO Cyber Range was awarded the 2021 EC innovation prize in the Disruptive Tech category.

Defense against DDoS attacks is addressed by another of the project's tools – the DDoS Clearing House, piloted in Italy and the Netherlands. Sharing data and the experience of experts in the face of attacks helps organizations find out what attacks exist so they can prepare for them in advance. Developing Cyber Threat Intelligence platforms for the telco and the finance sector are other examples of the project's achievements.

The CONCORDIA project (Cyber security cOmpeteNCe fOr Research anD Innovation) – links the technical and social sciences and involves 56 institutions from across the EU, including universities, research centers, private companies, and public bodies from 17 EU member states, Switzerland, Norway, Israel, and the UK. It is coordinated by the University of the Bundeswehr Munich. The project is funded by the European Union for an amount of almost 16 million euros. The project started on the 1st of January 2019 and ended on the 31st of March 2023.

CONCORDIA project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under Grant Agreement No 830927.