Prompted by the need to comply with environmental and societal concerns, Electrical Power and Energy Systems are undergoing an unprecedented transformation, demanding urgent upgrades to make them more reliable, resilient and secure. Modernization of current grids will greatly reduce the frequency and duration of power blackouts, diminish the impact of disruptive events and restore service faster when outages occur, creating broad benefits to society and economy. eFORT approach will enable the further upgrading of the energy grid without affecting the security of supply and increasing their reliability and resiliency against extreme weather events, man-made hazards and equipment failures. eFORT addresses this complex challenge by gathering a consortium of 24 partners, from 10 EU countries, that provides the needed expertise. The project will put in place a set of solutions at the cyber and physical layers for detecting, preventing and mitigating vulnerabilities and threats. Among them, an interoperable Intelligent Platform will set a common foundation for grid characterization and vulnerability overseeing, as well as gather information from smart grid components and apply heavy-duty algorithms, whereas Asset Management developments will strengthen grid infrastructure robustness, which will be empowered by the addressed Digital Technologies. All these elements will be validated in relevant environments coming from 4 demo cases covering the whole grid value chain: (i) a transmission network (The Netherlands); (ii) a remote distribution grid (Italy); (iii) a digital substation in Ukraine; and (iv) a micro-grid in Spain. Moreover, eFORT relies on several horizontal actions aiming at empowering EPES players by establishing a common regulatory and standardisation framework, performing technical and cost-benefit analysis, and evaluating new related business models and replication potential, in the pathway towards a more sustainable energy system.

In the era of hyper-connected digital economies, the smart technologies play a vital role in the operation of the Electrical Power and Energy Systems (EPES), transforming it into a new, decentralised model with multiple benefits, such as distributed generation, pervasive control, remote monitoring, and self-healing. However, the growing number of cybersecurity incidents in EPES promotes the need for shielding against a variety of threats, ranging from cyberattacks, dynamic and evolving Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), and privacy violations, to electricity disturbances and severe human errors caused by lack of relevant training. The diverse threats that modern EPES are facing require novel and holistic solutions that employ cutting-edge technologies to detect and mitigate threats, while continuously assessing the dynamic EPES environment, ensuring compliance with the latest cybersecurity standards and training the EPES personnel to appropriately respond to cybersecurity incidents and mitigate the human-error factor. Considering these, ELECTRON aims at delivering a new-generation EPES platform, capable of empowering the resilience of energy systems against cyber, privacy, and data attacks through four main pillars (risk assessment and certification, anomaly detection and prevention, failure mitigation and energy restoration, and addressing internal threats and gaps through AR-VR-based personnel training and certification), while fostering the cyber protection standardisation and certification via three novel authorities, namely the cybersecurity lighthouse, the cybersecurity training and certification authority, and the energy trading centre.

The overarching objective of the SECURE-NET project is to improve the research and innovation capabilities in cybersecurity of four widening countries: Estonia, Czechia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. This objective will be achieved via enhanced cross-sectoral collaboration and the better training of R&I talents. To this end, SECURE-NET brings together 11 partners: eight organizations from widening countries (four academic, three businesses, and one governmental organization) which will be supported by three partners from the Netherlands (two academic and one business entity). SECURE-NET will: i) develop a comprehensive framework for cross-sectoral staff secondments and R&I talents’ skill development; ii) provide 31 R&I talents from partner organizations with domain-specific knowledge and transferable skills in IP and technology transfer (with 27 secondees coming from widening countries and 22 secondees being early-career researchers or in junior positions); iii) strengthen cross-sectoral and cross-border collaboration between partners; and iv) enhance the international profile and visibility of the widening partners. As a result, SECURE-NET will contribute to better employability and career prospects for R&I talents and help overcome a lack of translation of scientific results into innovations. The latter is crucial to ensure that the EU catches up with other regions in terms of innovation output. Moreover, given the significant increase in both the variety and quantity of cyberattacks and their consequences in the European Union as whole, but in Eastern and Eastern Central Europe in particular, SECURE-NET is as timely as ever and will help safeguard the smooth operation of our highly digitized societies.