Authors: Antonis Voulgaridis, Efi Kafali / CERTH
The Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH, www.certh.gr) is one of the largest research centres in Greece. It was founded in 2000 and is located in Thessaloniki, Greece. The mission of CERTH is to promote the triplet Research – Development – Innovation by conducting high quality scientific research and developing innovative products and services while building strong partnerships with industry (national and international) and strong collaborations with research centres and universities in Greece and abroad. CERTH has participated successfully in more than 1,500 competitive research projects financed by the European Union (EU), leading industries from the USA, Japan and Europe and the Greek Government. Six spin off companies have been already launched through CERTH research activities. CERTH is listed among the Top-20 Research Centres of the EU with the highest participation in FP7 competitive research grants for the period 2007-2012 (16th place, up from 18th in 2011) and is listed first among all Greek organisations in terms of funding from the H2020 work programme. CERTH is participating in KINAITICS with the Information Technologies Institute (ITI, www.iti.gr), one of the leading Research Institutes of Greece in the field of Information and Communications Technology (ICT). It was founded in 1998 and since 10.3.2000 it is a founding member of CERTH. CERTH/ITI is one of the leading Greek institutions in the field of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) with long experience in numerous European and national R&D projects.
CERTH/ITI has joined KINAITICS with two of its labs, the Visual Computing Lab (VCL) and the Visual Analytics Lab (VALab) which cooperate to offer their expertise related to cybersecurity and achieve the goals of the project. In the scope of KINAITICS, CERTH/ITI is leading Work Package 3 “Continuous monitoring of AI related cyberphysical events”, as well as important tasks such as: “Attack type definition”, “Attacking Physical Systems”, “Hybrid defence mechanisms with Human-in-the-loop”, “Integration, installation and testing of defined attack vectors and defence strategies”.
VCL has been a key-role partner in several security projects, critical infrastructure protection projects as well as media and disinformation fighting projects, focusing on automated analysis of digital forensic data, Big Data management for law enforcement, deep learning for detecting criminal events, cost-effective processing and fusion of multimodal sensor data, as well as user-friendly collaboration tools for investigators. Currently, VCL consists of 4 senior researchers, 8 post-doctoral researchers and 50 research associates, working on 18 active projects. In KINAITICS, VCL brings its expertise in AI, cybersecurity and deep learning to provide hybrid human-AI components that identify cyber attacks and build novel defense approaches.
VALab is one of the laboratories of CERTH/ITI and was established in 2015. It is currently consisted of 2 senior researchers, 15 post-doctoral research fellows, 7 PhD candidates and 76 full-time research associates. The main purpose of the VALab is to conduct high-quality research in topics related to Data and Visual Analytics, Intuitive Human Machine Interaction interfaces, Personal Health Systems & Personalized Care Delivery, Physical Security and Cybersecurity. The group is currently participating in 54 EU and national funded projects (H2020, Horizon Europe, EDF, etc.), coordinating several of them, while also being involved in a number of flagship industrial projects. In KINAITICS, VALab brings its expertise in cybersecurity, AI/ML, CTI analysis, vulnerability detection, penetration testing and cyber range technologies.
The collaboration between CERTH/ITI’s VCL Lab and VALab can enhance the cybersecurity features of the KINAITICS use cases by identifying potential vulnerabilities, designing attack and defense mechanisms, as well as monitoring and alerting systems to prevent cyber attacks. This cooperation ensures that the critical assets identified for each use case are secure and resistant to adversaries.