This document, jointly developed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) and The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE), examines trends and presents an innovative approach for countering hostile actions and strengthening Europe's resilience. It also complements the previously work on The landscape of Hybrid Threats: A Conceptual Model.

The COmprehensive Resilience Ecosystem (CORE) model takes a 'whole-of-society' approach: it considers different "spaces" of society (e.g., governance, civic, services), different "levels" (international, national, and local), and, most importantly, their interactions.
It helps to show how hybrid threat activities, bit by bit, challenge democracies by introducing different types of pressure to the model's various elements (i.e., spaces and levels).

Specifically, the CORE model:

• maps how malicious actors use various tools against different domains to reach their target;
• helps detect hostile activities and their intensity;
• monitors affected dependencies to avoid possible cascading effects;
• facilitates the anticipation of damage to our democracies;
• assesses impacts of possible hybrid attacks and campaigns.
  

The novelty of the CORE model is that it provides democratic policymakers with a hands-on methodology to estimate how authoritarian states or non-state actors employ hybrid threats activities to manipulate or destabilise democracies. In this report, the comprehensive approach to resilient ecosystem (CORE) model which is a system-thinking representation of the society as a whole is proposed.