ECHO

European network of Cybersecurity centres and competence Hub for innovation and Operations

ECHO delivers an organized and coordinated approach to improve proactive cyber defence of the European Union, through effective and efficient multi-sector collaboration. The Partners will execute on a 48-month work plan to develop, model and demonstrate a network of cyber research and competence centres, with a central competence at the hub. The Central Competence Hub serves as the focal point for the ECHO Multi-sector Assessment Framework enabling multi-sector dependencies management, provision of an ECHO Early Warning System, an ECHO Federation of Cyber Ranges and management of an expanding collection of Partner Engagements. The ECHO Multi-sector Assessment Framework refers to the analysis of challenges and opportunities derived from sector specific use cases, transversal cybersecurity needs analysis and development of inter-sector Technology Roadmaps involving horizontal cybersecurity disciplines. The Early Warning System, Federation of Cyber Ranges and Inter-sector Technology Roadmaps will then be subject of Demonstration Cases incorporating relevant involvement of inter-dependent industrial sectors. The ECHO Cyber-skills Framework provides the foundation for development of cybersecurity education and training programmes including a common definition of transversal and inter-sector skills and qualifications needed by cybersecurity practitioners. The ECHO Cybersecurity Certification Scheme provides a sector specific and inter-sector process for cybersecurity certification testing of new technologies and products resulting from the proposed technology roadmaps. The project will develop and operate under an ECHO Governance Model, by which the efforts across the EU Network of Cybersecurity Competence Centres can be coordinated and optimized to provide lasting and sustainable excellence in cybersecurity skills development; research and experimentation; technology roadmaps delivery; and certified security products for improved cybersecurity resilience.

Within the project, MKLab as a department of the Information Technologies Institute (ITI) of CERTH will lead WP4, analysing common cybersecurity challenges, along with the development of inter-sector technology roadmaps and research and development of early prototype tools for addressing the identified challenges. Last but not least, MKLab will participate and contribute, to various extents, to all WPs (WP1-WP9).

PUBLICATIONS

  1. C. Iliou, T. Kostoulas, T. Tsikrika, V. Katos, S. Vrochidis, and I. Kompatsiaris, “Web Bot Detection Evasion Using Deep Reinforcement Learning”, In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2022), ACM, 23-26 Aug, 2022, DOI:10.1145/3538969.3538994. OPEN ACCESS
  2. A. Papoutsis, C. Iliou, D. Kavallieros, T. Tsikrika, S. Vrochidis, I. Kompatsiaris, "Host-based Cyber Attack Pattern Identification on Honeypot Logs Using Association Rule Learning". In Proceedings of the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Security and Resilience, Virtual Conference, 27-29 July, 2022, pp. 50-55, DOI:10.1109/CSR54599.2022.9850317.   OPEN ACCESS
  3. A. Spyros, A. Papoutsis, I. Koritsas, N. Mengidis, C. Iliou, D. Kavallieros, T. Tsikrika, S. Vrochidis, I. Kompatsiaris, "Towards Continuous Enrichment of Cyber Threat Intelligence: A Study on a Honeypot Dataset". Ιn Proceedings of the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Security and Resilience (CSR), 27-29 July, 2022, pp. 267-272, DOI:10.1109/CSR54599.2022.9850295. OPEN ACCESS
  4. N. Mengidis, M. Bozhilova, C. Ceresola, C. Colabuono, M. Cooke, G. Depaix, A. Genchev, G. Koykov, W. Mees, M. Merialdo, A. Voulgaridis, T. Tsikrika, K. Votis, S. Vrochidis, “Leveraging Cyber Ranges for Prototyping, Certification and Training: The ECHO case” in Proceedings of the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Security and Resilience (CSR), July 27-29, 2022, pp. 299-304,  DOI:10.1109/CSR54599.2022.9850278. OPEN ACCESS
  5. N., Mengidis, T., Tsikrika, S., Vrochidis, I., Kompatsiaris (2021) "Cybersecurity in Next Generation Energy Grids: Challenges and Opportunities for Blockchain and AI Technologies". In Tagarev T., Atanassov K.T., Kharchenko V., Kacprzyk J. (eds) Digital Transformation, Cyber Security and Resilience of Modern Societies. Studies in Big Data, vol 84. Springer, Cham. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65722-2_18. OPEN ACCESS
  6. P. Panagiotou, N. Mengidis, T. Tsikrika, S. Vrochidis, and I. Kompatsiaris. "Host-based Intrusion Detection Using Signature-based and AI-driven Anomaly Detection Methods." Information & Security: An International Journal 50, no. 1 (2021): 37-48. OPEN ACCESS
  7. C. Iliou, T. Kostoulas, T. Tsikrika, V. Katos, S. Vrochidis, and I. Kompatsiaris, "Web Bot Detection Evasion Using Generative Adversarial Networks", In Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Security and Resilience, IEEE, 26-28 July, 2021. DOI:10.1109/CSR51186.2021.9527915. OPEN ACCESS
  8. P. Evangelatos, C. Iliou, T. Mavropoulos, K. Apostolou, T. Tsikrika, S. Vrochidis and I. Kompatsiaris,"Named Entity Recognition in Cyber Threat Intelligence Using Transformer-based Models", in the proceedings of the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Security and Resilience (IEEE CSR) – Workshops, Virtual Conference, July 26 (Mon) – 28 (Wed), 2021, pp. 348-353, DOI:10.1109/CSR51186.2021.9527981. OPEN ACCESS
  9. P. Panagiotou, C. Iliou, K. Apostolou, T. Tsikrika, S. Vrochidis, P. Chatzimisios, I. Kompatsiaris, "Towards Selecting Informative Content for Cyber Threat Intelligence", In the proceedings of the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Security and Resilience (IEEE CSR) – Workshops, Virtual Conference, July 26 (Mon) – 28 (Wed), 2021, pp. 354-359, DOI:10.1109/CSR51186.2021.9527909. OPEN ACCESS
  10. N. Oikonomou, N. Mengidis, M. Spanopoulos-Karalexidis, A. Voulgaridis, M. Merialdo, I. Raisr, K. Hanson, P. de La Vallee, T. Tsikrika, S. Vrochidis and K. Votis, "ECHO Federated Cyber Range: Towards Next-Generation Scalable Cyber Ranges", in the proceedings of the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Security and Resilience (IEEE CSR) – Workshops, Virtual Conference, Virtual, July 26 - 28, 2021. OPEN ACCESS
  11. C. Iliou, T. Kostoulas, T. Tsikrika, V. Katos, S. Vrochidis, I. Kompatsiaris. "Detection of advanced web bots by combining web logs with mouse behavioural biometrics". Digital Threats: Research and Practice (DTRAP), 2021, Volume 2, Issue 3, 3 September 2021, DOI:10.1145/3447815. OPEN ACCESS
  12. N. Mengidis, T. Tsikrika, S. Vrochidis, and I. Kompatsiaris. “Blockchain and AI for the Next Generation Energy Grids: Cybersecurity Challenges and Opportunities”. Information & Security: An International Journal 43, no. 1 (2019): 21-33, 15 January 2019. OPEN ACCESS