The GUARD that works for security of the Internet

Security of the global network cannot be provided without international cooperation. Also very important is to integrate security efforts of particular organisations. One of the projects dedicated to develop new level of cooperation is the GUARD (A cyber-security framework to GUArantee Reliability and trust for Digital service chains) funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 framework programme. Consortium, forming the project, met with the European Commission on May 27 to present the results of the individual teams. NASK is an active member of the consortium.

The goal of the GUARD project is the design, implementation and validation of an open and extensible platform for advanced control and protection of credible and reliable business chains covering many administrative domains and heterogeneous IT systems infrastructure. GUARD assumes architectural separation of studies from data sources by an open, modular, extensible and scalable structure of the platform being built. The comprehensive solution developed under the GUARD project will combine security, already in the design phase, with improved inspection and detection techniques, raising situational awareness at various levels of the company's structure thanks to adapted information content to enable quick and effective response to cyber threats.

GUARD is an "Innovation Action" project where the emphasis is not on scientific research, but practical aspects of the effective use by partners of their proprietary tools and methods, modified and adapted to implement tasks in the project - says Professor Joanna Kołodziej, project coordinator. NASK’s main work base for the NASK team are modifications to the Darnet Telescope tools developed as part of the SISDEN project (Horizon 2020) completed last year, and the overall concept of the method for detecting attacks in Bluetooth Mesh networks developed in the National Platform for Cybersecurity project. Therefore, it is a great field for the development of technologies created by scientists and engineers from NASK, adaptation of proprietary tools for detecting attacks and anomalies in various types of ICT networks and excellent promotion of these tools on an international forum. Working in the GUARD project is also a way to extend the life cycle of these technologies and opportunity to modernize them in line with new trends observed on the ICT market - continues Professor Kołodziej.

Results of the NASK’s teams were presented by Mateusz Krzysztoń and Paweł Szynkiewicz, who represent two NASK’s Centres, mainly involved in the GUARD – Centre for Research and Technology Transfer and Centre for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure.