The Eurecat technology centre is leading the Secutil project which has addressed technological innovations to safeguard the cybersecurity and physical security of critical water, gas and electricity infrastructures. It is built on the deployment of internet-connected devices (IoT) in order to step up the resilience of this type of infrastructure against potential cybernetic or combined (physical and cyber) attacks.
The Secutil project, which comes to an end in March, is part of the Ris3Cat Utilities Community and involves Cellnex, Naturgy, Cetaqua, the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), the University of Lleida (UdL) and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC).
“The project holistically addresses the resilience of critical infrastructures,” says Mario Reyes, head of research at Eurecat’s IT&OT Security Unit. It includes algorithms, technologies and systems based on cryptography, artificial intelligence, machine learning and cognitive reasoning in anticipation of “a huge increase in sensorisation, in the volume of data and in the type of critical data.”
“The goal is to build distributed, decentralised and smart tools and solutions to address new security challenges while also generating knowledge about attacks, threats and attackers and improving decision-making,” he adds.
“This will ramp up the resilience of critical infrastructures,” notes Juan Caubet, director of IT&OT Security at Eurecat. “Moreover, sharing the knowledge of threats and attacks acquired will also help in the global battle against cybercrime and cyberterrorism.”
With this in mind, the Secutil project has encompassed innovations in cryptographic key management and authentication systems, hardwiring quantum computing-resistant cryptography into IoT devices, data integrity and secure and efficient firmware updates.
It has also addressed physical access control systems combined with privacy-preserving authentication, positioning and human detection systems, new bio-inspired attack protection, prediction and detection models and active and autonomous defence mechanisms driven by the attack and threat intelligence generated.
The Secutil project, which will conclude next March, has been running for three years with a total budget coming to €1,253,787. It has been co-financed by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) managed by Catalonia Trade & Investment, the Catalan Government’s business competitiveness agency, with a €626,893 envelope.
