INESC TEC develops tool to detect cyber-attacks in Europe

The Systems and Computer Engineering Institute of Porto (INESC TEC) participates in the European project PANDORA, which intends to contribute to strengthen European Union's cybernetics defence capacity, by developing an open tool that is available to all member countries. 

The continuous use of information technology in military units and chains of command can make EU member states defence abilities vulnerable to cyber-attacks; in this regard, INESC-TEC developed a tool to help detect cyber-attacks within the European territory.

"This solution uses artificial intelligence techniques and the automatic processing to detect a cyber-attack in real time, all the while seeking to know more about its origin, describe it and share this information with other countries so that they can protect themselves", explains António Pinto, member of the Portuguese team that is part of the project, who is also researcher at CRACS and professor at the Superior School of Technology and Management (ESTG) of Porto Polytechnic.

The fact that this is an integrated and open system leads to resource improvement and expedited reaction time. "We think that this project will bring a decisive contribution to developing the EU resilience abilities", furthers António Pinto.

The PANDORA project (Cyber Defence Platform For Real-Time Threat Hunting, Incident Response and Information Sharing) includes 15 partners from seven countries. In Portugal, besides INESC TEC, CINAMIL - Military Academy Research Centre and GMVIS Skysoft are also part of the project.

The European Commission has allocated over 7 million euros to this project, through the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP).