About

The research and innovation performance of the countries in the EU is significantly different. Bulgaria is ranked below 70% of the EU27 average of the composite indicator on Research Excellence and it is recognized as a "Widening" country. This fact is due to, among other reasons, the limited opportunities to participate in research networks, lack of dedicated national budget for science, lack of success in the different framework programs including FP7, H2020.

Research in Cyber Security is a strategic topic and high-priority research area in the EU and globally, see for example the recent EC proposal for a European Cybersecurity Competence network and Centre. The globalization of the world and Internet connectivity and the emerging new technologies involving smart assets, ranging from smart things to smart phones, smart buildings and smart cities) require rigid cyber security controls in order to protect the critical infrastructures, the European citizens and shield the quality of life. As such, improving the (cyber) security posture is essential to each nation's security and economic wellbeing. Today more than 80% of total commercial transactions are online, requiring a state of the art security capabilities from the industrial ecosystem.

In this context:

• Cyber security is an emerging and rapidly evolving domain of multidisciplinary research, in the context of socio-technical and cyber physical systems protection.
• The cyber threat landscape is becoming increasingly complex (due to the emerging technological paradigms such as IoT, Software Defined Networks as well as applications to cyber physical systems such as smart cities and associated verticals) and requires effective cooperation among its participants.
• Research Institutes, Academia, and Industry should cooperate based on the mutual benefit principle.

The Bulgarian Defence Institute (BDI) is a research organization in the Cyber Security domain. BDI staff are members of several cyber security research and scientific activities, and their excellence and quality of their outputs is constantly growing with the aim to match the quality outputs of leading international organizations.

Against the above setting, the overall mission of CyNET project is:

This expansion will be enabled by outlining a cyber security strategy (WP2) within the CyNET project in cooperation with advanced and internationally leading organisations in the field of cyber security research. Based on this strategy, capacity building (WP4), and networking actions (WP3) will be carried out within the CyNET project. These activities will enable BDI to develop a specific cybersecurity research profile and establish initial international contacts in the area. The sustainable success of these measures will be ensured by establishing appropriate organizational structures and processes at BDI, based on the experience of the international project partners:

• AIT AUSTRIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GMBH (AIT), Austria
• BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY (BU), UK
• UNIVERSITET PO BIBLIOTEKOZNANIE I INFORMACIONNI TEHNOLOGII (SULSIT), Bulgaria
• FONDAZIONE POLITECNICO DI MILANO S2D2 (FPM), Italy

Furthermore, CyNET will accelerate the transfer of applied cyber security research to Bulgarian stakeholders and will contribute to their economic development. In addition, the CyNET will update and facilitate transfer the Common Body of Knowledge in Cyber security to BDI by incorporating it to the education activities and curriculum of Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD students through summer/winter schools, workshops, and seminars to address current and future cyber security challenges. These activities are aligned with the Bulgarian Innovative Strategy for Smart Specialization, which identifies the challenges in the thematic area of "Informatics and ICT" related to the need to establish sustainable relationships between science-education-business and the lack of qualified human resources. Besides that, the CyNET project is in line with updated National Research Development Strategy (priority area "Information and communication technologies") and aligned with Bulgarian National Cyber Security Strategy.