The groundbreaking research project ELECTRON, funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 Programme, successfully developed solutions to enhance the resilience of Electric Power and Energy Systems (EPES) against cyberthreats.
One of the key outcomes of the ELECTRON project is the development of an enterprise-level cybersecurity platform that ensures increased resilience while maintaining business continuity and operational integrity of EPES infrastructures. This platform offers a range of services tailored to meet the needs of EPES stakeholders, including:
- Modern collaborative risk and certification framework
Fully aligned with the Cybersecurity Act, this framework not only enhances the ELECTRON ability to manage cyber risks but also ensures compliance with the latest regulatory standards. - Cyber-defence and protection framework
Leveraging advancements in AI-based decentralized and federated learning techniques, this framework provides a robust shield against evolving cyberthreats. - Advanced cybersecurity training process for EPES personnel
Utilizing cutting-edge AR/VR technology, the training process ensures that EPES stakeholders are well-equipped to handle any cybersecurity challenge targeting their critical infrastructure. - ELECTRON Cybersecurity Lighthouse
A beacon of excellence in cybersecurity practices, fully in line with the most recent EU policy and certification requirements in cybersecurity.
Successful demonstration of the solutions
The ELECTRON cybersecurity solutions were successfully demonstrated through four pilots running on actual EPES infrastructure across four different EU countries. Several testimonial videos from high profile management and technical personnel of the end-users involved in the ELECTRON pilots highlight the success and the benefits of the project outcomes for their businesses and daily operations. The videos will be soon available on the project website.
KIOS’ critical role in the project
The KIOS CoE played an important role in the success of ELECTRON by delivering an advanced Sandboxing environment. This testing and validation playground integrates cutting-edge technology to create highly accurate digital twins of EPES infrastructures, including their communication layers, in compliance with the relevant industrial communication protocols.
The KIOS Sandboxing was used for developing, testing and validation of several ELECTRON innovative services dealing with advanced proactive grid management, including proactive nanogrid islanding and prevention and mitigation schemes against sophisticated Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) cyberattacks and cascading effects.
This environment also allowed for joint IT/OT impact assessment of broad types of cyber-attacks on EPES on even larger-scale scenarios than those involved in the four pilots, ensuring that the ELECTRON solutions are robust and scalable.
In addition, KIOS CoE contributed to the release of several open-source datasets, which were produced using this advanced infrastructure. The datasets are highly useful for fostering further research in the field of cybersecurity for EPES and are available at https://electron-project.eu/datasets/. The datasets are also supported by several high calibre publications which showcase their applicability in real-life scenarios and are available at https://electron-project.eu/publications/.
The successful completion of the ELECTRON project represents a major step forward in securing EPES infrastructures against cyberthreats.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101021936.
