Enhanced Security componentS for InduStrial ioT – ASSIST

Funder: Project funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3 – Cascade Call related to the Program “Security Rights in Cyber Space – SERICS – Spoke 8” funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU;

Award Number: Cascade Call related to the Program “Security Rights in Cyber Space – SERICS – Spoke ” PE0000014, CUP B53C22003950001;

Start date: 10/05/2024

End date: 09/08/2025

Total NRRP funding for the cascade call: € 4.000.000,00 

Total NRRP funding for Unipr: € 230.950,00  

Objectives

The ASSIST project has been proposed and funded for the topic “Cybersecurity solutions for smart components and architecture” of the ECOCYBER project of the Cascade Call related to SERICS SPOKE 8 - “Risk management and governance”.  ASSIST aims to study and propose an enhanced IIoT distributed architecture with new security mechanisms/components addressing some of the challenging issues in the software vulnerabilities of these critical industrial systems.

Activities

The main research activities focus on: 

1. Detection components: design of proper security components targeting the detection of possible vulnerabilities and attack attempts, also leveraging upon state-of-the-art Machine Learning methods and tools, such as Large Language Models;
2. Architecture for Secure M2M Interactions:  design of proper security components that can be used to enhance the overall security of the systems by guaranteeing both the security of the interactions in terms of entity authentication and authorization, and the protection of the data in terms of data integrity, confidentiality and access control. 
3. Implementation and Tests: all ASSIST detection components will be separately implemented and tested. A performance campaign will be carried out and results will be analysed to validate the proposed solutions and to tune possible system parameters.

The University of Parma will entirely carry out the project. Additionally, ASSIST will keep an open communication channel with other relevant SERICS Spoke 8 projects to create synergies and collaborations.

• Department of Engineering and Architecture

• Università degli Studi di Parma (UNIPR)

ASSIST will deliver the following main results:

1. Design of the security components for intrusion and data anomaly detection and for application security assessment
2. Design of the security components for secure M2M interactions and the overall architecture
3. Implementation and testing of all proposed security components

Fondazione SERICS – SEcurity and RIghts in the CyberSpace