In today’s digital landscape, cybersecurity stands as the cornerstone of our interconnected world. Beyond being merely a technical concern, it emerges as a strategic imperative, especially for Operators of Essential Services (OESs) and critical infrastructures. These sectors, encompassing vital areas such as energy, transportation, healthcare, finance, water, and telecommunications, play an indispensable role in upholding the functioning of societies. Numerous factors contribute to this understanding, including the economic impact of a service disruption, the critical dependency on Information Technology (IT) for operations, national security concerns, protection of sensitive data, regulatory compliance requirements and the ever-evolving threat landscape; altogether underscore the importance of Business Continuity, enabling organizations to recover quickly from disruptions and ensure operational continuity even in the face of a cyber incident.
Obviously, all the above apply for the OTE (https://www.cosmote.gr/cs/otegroup/en/orama_kai_strathgikh.html), the leading telecom operator in Greece and member of the Deutsche Telecom Group, acting as an OES, responsible for critical telecommunications infrastructures and services. At the same time, OTE acts as an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions provider (https://www.cosmote.gr/cs/business/en/ict_solutions.html). Through offerings like information security solutions for businesses, offensive security services, and DDoS protection solutions, OTE ensures the resilience and security of its clients. Recognizing the criticality of innovation in safeguarding essential services and infrastructures, OTE is eager to capitalize on the advancements offered by the PHOENI2X project to enhance its existing cybersecurity solutions through exploring the cutting-edge technological frameworks and assessing the technological and business benefits brought by the PHOENI2X tools/solutions.
Firstly, what sets the PHOENI2X project apart is the integration of advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI), including Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), to enhance situational awareness, prediction and response to cyber threats, assess risks, and prioritize attacks, providing more sophisticated capabilities, more comprehensive understanding of cybersecurity risks and enables more targeted mitigation strategies. In addition, the real-time and automated capabilities (incl. anomalies forecasting, asset monitoring, risk reassessment and threat responding) are of great importance because they increase effectiveness in security operations, allow for prompt risks mitigation and minimization of potential damages. Valuable knowledge and inspiration are also gained from the existing tools and baseline components (such as the Security and Privacy Assurance Suite (SPA), the User & Entity Behaviour Analytics (UEBA) and the Incident Response (IR) tools by SPHYNX) that are further expanded in the context of the PHOENI2X project to fully support the envisioned functionalities. The adaptability and scalability to evolving cyber threats, offered by PHOENI2X allow customization to clients’ operational needs and cyber strategies, continuous improvement of cybersecurity posture and effective response to changing threat landscapes.
The project’s outcomes are anticipated to validate the accuracy, speed and depth of the cyber resilience processes and provide valuable insights into the performance and effectiveness of own solutions, enabling continuous optimization. Through realistic use cases spanning sectors like energy, health and transportation, the PHOENI2X project aims to showcase the efficacy of its innovative approach against the inadequacy of traditional cybersecurity methods, while datasets to be made available from the respective use case environments are expected to further benefit the results.
It is worth mentioning that special focus and effort will be paid on the support of the novelties that the PHOENI2X will experiment (such as the Business Continuity playbooks), as well as on the differentiating value proposition and the investigation of the exploitation potential of PHOENI2X, especially for the most mature stand-alone modules and/or processes to be delivered. What is certain is that although the commercialization of a product may necessitate extensive testing and optimization, it’s undeniable that the journey through innovation pathways is both creative and exciting.
Author: OTE R&D team