Support for Implementation of EU Legislation on Cybersecurity and National Cybersecurity Strategies (2024) -

• Incident management solutions reducing the overall costs of cybersecurity for individual Member States and for the EU as a whole.
• Better compliance with NIS2 (Directive (EU) 2022/2555) and higher levels of situational awareness and crisis response in Member States.
• Organisation of events, workshops, stakeholder consultations and white papers.
• Enhanced cooperation, preparedness and cybersecurity resilience in the EU.
• Support actions and cooperation for further advanced of cybersecurity certification.
• Effective supervision and enforcement of the CRA by the market surveillance authorities and adequate capabilities of notifying authorities and national accreditation bodies for the implementation of the CRA.

The action focuses on capacity building and the enhancement of cooperation on cybersecurity at technical, operational and strategic levels, in the context of existing and proposed EU legislation on cybersecurity in particular the NIS2 Directive (Directive (EU) 2022/2555), the Cybersecurity Act, and the Directive on attacks against information systems (Directive 2013/40). It complements the work of SOCs in the area of threat detection. It is a continuation of work currently supported under the previous Digital Work Programme.

In addition, this action also aims at supporting the implementation of the proposed Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) by market surveillance authorities/notifying authorities/national accreditation bodies, by increasing their capacities to ensure effective implementation of the CRA.

Proposals should contribute to achieving at least one of these objectives:

• Development of trust and confidence between Member States.
• Supporting market surveillance authorities/notifying authorities/national accreditation bodies to implement the CRA.
• Effective operational cooperation of organisations entrusted with EU or Member State’s national level cybersecurity, in particular cooperation of CSIRTs (including in relation to the CSIRT Network) or cooperation of Operators of Essential Services including public authorities.
• Better security and notification processes and means for Essential and Important Entities in the EU, including cross-border (automated) incident notification systems.
• Better reporting of cyber-attacks to law enforcement authorities in line with the Directive on attacks against information systems.
• Improved security of network and information systems in the EU.
• More alignment of Member States’ implementations of NIS2 (Directive (EU) 2022/2555).
• Support cybersecurity certification in line with the Cybersecurity Act.

The action will focus on the support of at least one of the following priorities:

• Implementation, validation, piloting and deployment of technologies, tools and IT-based solutions, processes and methods for monitoring and handling cybersecurity incidents.
• Increasing capacity for market surveillance authorities/notifying authorities/national accreditation bodies in view of tasks as provided by the CRA.
• Collaboration, communication, awareness-raising activities, knowledge exchange and training, including through the use of cybersecurity ranges, of public and private organisations working on the implementation of NIS2 (Directive (EU) 2022/2555).
• Twinning schemes involving originator and adopter organisations from at least 2 different Member States to facilitate the deployment and uptake of technologies, tools, processes and methods for effective cross-border collaboration preventing, detecting and countering Cybersecurity incidents.
• Robustness and resilience building measures in the cybersecurity area that strengthen suppliers’ ability to work systematically with cybersecurity relevant information or supplying actionable data to CSIRTs.
• Ensure that manufacturers improve the security of products with digital elements since the design and development phase and throughout the whole life cycle.
• Ensure a coherent cybersecurity framework, facilitating compliance for hardware and software producers.
• Enhance the transparency of security properties of products with digital elements.
• Enable businesses across all sectors and consumers to use products with digital elements securely.
• Support to Cybersecurity certification, including support to national cybersecurity certification authorities and other relevant stakeholders, such as SMEs. This includes activities such as threat-led penetration testing, acquiring certification testbeds, sharing best practices, implementing innovative evaluation methods for specific ICT products or components.

Proposals may target, where relevant, Member State competent authorities, which play a central role in the implementation of NIS2 (Directive (EU) 2022/2555), as well as other actors within the scope of this Directive.

Proposals may support, amongst others, the continuation of cybersecurity activities funded through the CEF Telecom programme, building where relevant on the results from the CEF projects.

Proposals may support, amongst others, for the onboarding to the CEF Cybersecurity Core Service Platforms of public and private organisations working on the implementation of NIS2 (Directive (EU) 2022/2555) and are potential contributors to the goals of the CEF Cybersecurity Core Service Platform.

This action seeks to support the European cybersecurity posture by creating a European ecosystem of companies and organisations that will support the implementation of EU cybersecurity legislation that will contribute to strengthening the European capacities in protecting the cyberspace. The results from the work carried out in the projects funded under this action may include implementation, validation, piloting and deployment of technologies, tools and IT-based solutions, processes and methods for monitoring and handling cybersecurity incidents involving cybersecurity of providers of essential services and critical infrastructures, as well as other actors. As previously noted, participation of non-EU entities entails the risk of highly sensitive information about security infrastructure, risks and incidents being subject to legislation or pressure that obliges those non-EU entities to disclose this information to non-EU governments, with an unpredictable security risk. Therefore, based on the outlined security reasons, the actions relating to these technologies are subject to Article 12(5) of Regulation (EU) 2021/694, in consistency with WP 2021/2022.

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