ÉGIDA shares success stories in security and privacy technologies at its closing event
ÉGIDA, the first and only national network in security and privacy technologies made up of four technology centers of excellence in the Basque Country, Andalusia and Galicia, held a meeting on November 16 in Bilbao that brought together cybersecurity professionals and companies interested in knowing the latest developments in this field.
Accompanying the centers that form the consortium; Gradiant, Vicomtech, Fidesol and Ikerlan, the companies LKS Next, Arteche and NaturalVox participated, showing the practical applications of the technologies developed in the project in terms of protection of digital identities, cybersecurity in embedded systems, cryptography and identity and data privacy.
The objective of the ÉGIDA project has been to strengthen the national innovation system and the cybersecurity technology market, bringing security and privacy technologies closer to companies. Thus, since May 2020, the network has favored collaboration between leading technological centers in the field of industrial cybersecurity and has promoted the level of maturity of different technologies associated with the protection of security and privacy, working with a clear vocation to develop market-oriented research.
“Thanks to the drive of ÉGIDA, technologies that three years ago were in the experimental phase at the laboratory level are now being tested in controlled production environments”, explains Marc Barceló, an expert researcher in cybersecurity at Ikerlan. The center has contributed its experience in cybersecurity to the project, both in the development, evaluation and certification of industrial components and in technologies for distributed networks, such as 5G cellular networks, IoT or blockchain.
As an application example, Ikerlan presented in Bilbao two technology transfer cases for LKS Next and Arteche. Thus, for the technology consultancy it has developed a platform for managing digital identities that allows it to safely generate, distribute and even destroy “what would be the equivalent of the DNI of industrial machinery connected to the Internet”. In the case of Arteche, for its part, IKERLAN has validated the definition of a methodology that will allow the Biscayan company to obtain, for its products oriented to the electricity sector, the IEC 62443 certification, a reference standard in cybersecurity for industrial components.
“The work in the ÉGIDA network has made it possible to establish solid links between the Centers and to be able to offer a more cohesive image to companies in the sector”, comments Raúl Orduna, director of the Digital Security Department at Vicomtech. In this case, the The center has led the identity management activity and has participated in binary code analysis, anomaly analysis and automated protection measures.
As an example of application to the privacy protection sector, Vicomtech and NaturalVox presented an example of collaboration for the detection of identity theft through voice. This collaboration has allowed research with a more realistic case and real data, validating the approach through the good results obtained in research competitions. During the project, use cases obtained by synthetic generation and by recording reproduction have been proposed, using deep learning algorithms to detect impersonations, concluding that it is more advantageous to apply it with data close to the application domain, and allowing to study in which parts of the production process would be more interesting its application.
For its part, the Fidesol center from Granada exhibited the latest advances in disruptive and distributed technologies to improve security in distributed systems and networks. Likewise, Gradiant, the leader of the project, showed the success stories developed with the companies Realsec and Abanca in the field of applied cryptography.
ÉGIDA, at the forefront of cybersecurity
ÉGIDA is the first and only national network in security and privacy technologies made up of technological centers of excellence. It was created in January 2020, within the framework of the Cervera Program for Technological Centers, of the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Center for Industrial Technological Development (CDTI), to strengthen applied research, reinforcing the technological capabilities of the centers that comprise it and promoting collaboration with companies. The network is made up of IKERLAN, Vicomtech, Gradiant and Fidesol. It has had one with an investment of 3.3 million euros.
Since its foundation, ÉGIDA has undertaken research in security and privacy technologies in four large four areas: applied cryptography technologies for the protection of confidential information; digital identity and privacy for fraud prevention; security in distributed systems to improve security in disruptive technologies and their use with IoT, 5G or DLT / blockchain technologies; as well as the development of secure information systems, which allow increasing the resilience of information systems against cyber attacks.
