The space component of the Copernicus programme provides Europe and the world through its open data policy with massive amounts of data produced by its satellites and received daily by its ground segments. Now well established, the programme provides vital information services to governmental organisations, businesses and the public.

In the European security landscape, Space Ground Segments increasingly appear as potential “new targets” of “new threats”, especially the hybrid ones (e.g. cyber-physical). Indeed, a physical/cyber-attack toward space ground installations or communication networks would cause debilitating impact on public safety and security of European citizens and could also affect other European critical infrastructures through cascading effects.

"Current approaches do not fully exploit the recent advances in surveillance mechanisms with robotic technologies and AI and are based on standards considered outdated by the space ecosystem."

The 7SHIELD project applies cyber-physical threat detection mechanisms along with situational picture generation techniques to develop a holistic integrated security framework covering all the macro-stages of crisis management (prevention, detection, response and mitigation) with the aim to protect EU Space Ground Segment infrastructure against cyber, physical and hybrid threats.