UL Department: UL Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Code: V2-2378
Project Title: Cyber security of defence systems and critical infrastructures
Duration: 01.10.2023 – 30.09.2026
Lead: doc. dr. Urban Sedlar
Research activities: Engineering sciences and technologies
Research organisations: Faculty of Electrical Engineering (SICRIS)
Partners
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana
Funding:
Public Agency for Scientific Research and Innovation of the Republic of Slovenia
Ministry of Defense
Government Office for Information Security
The rapid development of modern technology enabled the digital transformation of the economy and the society, as well as the digitalisation of domains that provide the underlying environment for a stable and secure functioning of the nation-state as a whole. This includes the defence, internal security, intelligence, protection and rescue sectors, as well as all providers of essential services (energy, health, transport, water, banking, communications, etc.).
Digital transformation has increased efficiency and productivity, but has also led to a sharp rise in cyber threats. Modern internet-connected systems are becoming homogeneous, giving attackers a unified playground: tools, techniques and knowledge that are useful for civilian IT systems are thus also becoming useful for attacking the vital defence and intelligence infrastructures that underpin society as a whole.
The protection of information and communication systems is not trivial due to a complex interplay of human, technological, economic and legal factors. Technological security weaknesses are complemented by human and psychological factors such as poor security hygiene, breaches of protocol or, quite simply, human error.
At the same time, carrying out attacks has become an extremely profitable business with major implications for national security. Another threat that is growing extremely rapidly is the rise of artificial intelligence systems based on large language models – which are already reaching expert level in many areas, including the execution of cyber-attacks, and will lead to an unprecedented rise in advanced threats in the coming years.
The project aims to profile the TTP of attackers in the targeted sectors. To this end, we will build a comprehensive platform for collecting and fusing data from different sensor systems, decoys and databases, enabling advanced data classification and analysis, as well as interactive attack exploitation, in order to more effectively prevent attacks and protect the systems.
Project structure
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