During the International Scientific Conference “SOCIETY.TECHNOLOGY.SECURITY 2021” in March 26, 2021 organized by Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences, H2020 project SPARTA online workshop on cybersecurity issues was organized by LMT.
The keynote speaker at the Conference – the President of LMT, Prof., Dr.oec. Juris Binde emphasized importance of cybersecurity and digitalization solutions for whole Industry 4.0 – everything is connected to everything – IoT, cloud technologies, high speed telecommunication systems and other tools allow to automate very complex tasks for production and organisation of different processes. The main core pillars of Industry 4.0 are: Advanced Automation, Seamless Connectivity, Sophisticated Data Analytics and Industrial Cybersecurity. The Industry 4.0 refers to the convergence and application of nine Digital Industrial Technologies: advanced robotics, additive manufacturing, augmented reality, simulation, high speed telecommunication system integration, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, cybersecurity and Big Data & Analytics.
Cybersecurity is a key issue that provides all Industry 4.0 systems and elements secure against very complex and highly sophisticated cyber-attacks and cyber-threats.
During his presentation Prof., Dr.oec. Juris Binde indicated cybersecurity megatrends in 2020 and beyond, which are: data privacy (EU GDPR, CCPA), OT/IoT security, Endpoint & Cloud/Edge Security and Brand Reputation & Cyber Resilience. The LMT President stressed on importance for ensuring a secure IoT environment as key element of the Industry 4.0.
He closed his speech with statement: “The cybercrime is the greatest threat to every company in the world. Stephane Nappo has said “It Takes 20 Years to build a reputation and a few minutes of cyber-incident to ruin it”.
Moderator of the Conference was Dr.sc.ing. Kaspars Kalnins, the senior researcher with more than 20 year experience in H2020, ESA, EDIDP, FP7, FP6, etc. projects at Riga Technical University, Institute of Materials and Structures and LMT Ltd.
Since beginning of 2019, LMT is the partner in H2020 funded project SPARTA with significant role in testing and validating of “T-SHARK program – Full spectrum cybersecurity awareness” from point of mobile network operator perspective. Armands Meirans, LMT Innovation Lead of Public Safety and Defence and LMT SPARTA project manager pointed out, that LMT has recently accepted the challenge to conduct the study on topic “5G network and elections – pros and cons” to evaluate – How 5G can affect cybersecurity and election interference in digital age during municipalities elections in Latvia at the beginning of June 2021.
Martins Svirksts, LMT cybersecurity expert explained, that Latvia has mature cybersecurity capabilities as the country is located at the Eastern border of EU and NATO, as well as LMT pays great attention to cybersecurity issues by implementing cybersecurity in lifecycle of LMT products and services. LMT has strong presence of IoT products and the cybersecurity unit identifies potential cyber-threats and attacks to mitigate the risks as much as possible. With increasing number of IoT devices and widespread use of 5G, it will become big challenge, especially in DDoS area. LMT is actively working on several 5G use cases for the needs of different industries by focusing on proof of 5G future technologies. Therefore, LMT together with Latvian National Armed Forces has launched the first European 5G test site in Ādaži (Riga region), Latvia in 2020. The 5G test site ensures an environment for development of various sensors, defence systems, platforms, unmanned solutions for military applications, Virtual Reality training by using 5G and performance of experiments with its prototypes, what are essential for H2020, EDIDP and other European R&D projects.
Within SPARTA T-Shark work package, LMT is actively involved in T-SHARK data sharing platform, where LMT together with other partners are working on a complex problem – how to safeguard the information to increase sharing between multiple parties by taking companies’ data security and privacy issues into consideration and meanwhile to identify and protect against cyber-threats and cyber-attacks. Next upcoming moths LMT will be focus on LMT study about 5G security threats under «Election interference» use case.
SPARTA Co-ordinator – Florent Kirchner, CEA stress on, that SPARTA is an ambitious European project with goal to develop the implementation of high-level research and innovation in cybersecurity technologies required to established European Strategic Digital Autonomy. SPARTA aims to set up unique collaboration between cybersecurity stakeholders by representing scientific excellence, technological innovation and social sciences in order to form a world-leading Cybersecurity Competence Network across the EU. SPARTA has four ambitious cybersecurity research programmes: T-SHARK – Full-spectrum cybersecurity awareness; CAPE – Continuous assessment in polymorphous environments; HAII-T – High-assurance intelligent infrastructure toolkit and SAFAIR – High-assurance intelligent infrastructure toolkit.
Artsiom Yautsiukhin, CNR emphasized importance of SPARTA Partnership program for establishment SPARTA Associates and Friends to create a SPARTA Joint Competence Centre infrastructure and cybersecurity community across EU.
Marius Momeu, TUM provided information on SPARTA Roadmap, what’s aim is to stimulate the development and deployment of key technologies in cybersecurity to retain digital sovereignty and autonomy of the European industries. In collaboration with the Roadmap, SPARTA launched four R&D Programs: T-SHARK, CAPE, HAII-T and SAFAIR. A major objective of SPARTA is creation of European Cybersecurity Roadmap, of which two versions have already been published and the final – third one will be availble at the end of 2021.
Karlis Podins, CERT.LV spoke about “Digitizing Elections – Why Distributed Analog Systems are Hard Problems”. Actual topic in next years is organization of digitized Latvian Saeima (Parliament) Elections. There are some advantages for electronic voting – online voter database, check for multiple voting, fake/invalid ID check. Meanwhile, there are several significant risks for Digitizing Elections – if the database goes down, elections are stopped; multiply voting possibility for selected people; voter denial by computer and no observability by human presence.
Dr.sc.ing. Ginta Majore, Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences introduced with the study “ARTSS Method for Modelling Resilient and Secure Services: Telemedicine Case”. ARTSS method is the most appropriate in early stage of development of complex solutions in telemedicine.
CERTS.LV and Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences are involved in SPARTA Arbitrage Group.
SPARTA (Strategic programs for advanced research and technology in Europe) is a new Cybersecurity Competence Network project supported by Europe’s H2020 Program. The SPARTA consortium is led by CEA, assembled by 44 partners from 14 EU Member States and attracted more than 90 Associates/Friends. LMT is the partner from Latvia with role to provide 4G and 5G network infrastructure for the data sharing, testing T-SHARK program and perform study “5G network and elections – pros and cons” with practical experiments during Municipalities elections in Latvia.
