Impact of malicious use of Open-Source Intelligence on critical infrastructure business continuity
European Commission · Horizon Europe Framework Programme (HORIZON)
Posted 5 May 2027 · About 13 months left
Summary
Expected Outcome:
Project results are expected to contribute to some or all of the following outcomes:
Critical infrastructure operators and authorities have improved awareness of Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) and their potential impact on security of their operations;
Toolbox for OSINT mapping, including enhanced analysis and risk flagging is developed and available to relevant stakeholders;
Critical infrastructure operators and authorities have improved incident response, emergency plans and business continuity models;
Removal of potentially harmful OSINT from the public domain in order to counter/prevent preparations and attempted attacks against critical entities, including the lone wolf and hybrid scenarios;
Awareness campaigns and training curricula for critical entities’ employees are developed.
Scope:
The malicious use of Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) is a known concern and technique used by offenders to retrieve personal, professional, and official or technical information about entities and their employees either to immediately plot illegal actions or use it to access more sensitive data with social engineering techniques like tailored data phishing. Although…
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Eligibility and conditions
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">General conditions
1. Admissibility Conditions: Proposal page limit and layout
described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes.
Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System.
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2. Eligible Countries
described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes.
A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.
3. Other Eligible Conditions
In line with the “restriction on control in innovation actions in critical technology areas” delineated in General Annex B of the General Annexes, entities established in an eligible country but which are directly or indirectly controlled by China or by a legal entity established in China are not eligible to participate in the action.
Subject to restrictions for the protection of European communication networks.
The following additional eligibility conditions apply:
This topic requires involvement as beneficiaries of at least 3 relevant practitioners from EU Member States or Associated Countries. Depending on the specific proposal submitted, these practitioners should represent one or several of the following portfolios:
critical infrastructure operator,
authority responsible for critical infrastructure resilience,
law enforcement or private companies providing security for critical infrastructure.
For these participants, applicants must fill in the table “Information about security practitioners” in the application form with all the requested information, following the template provided in the submission IT tool.
If projects use satellite-based earth observation, positioning, navigation and/or related timing data and services, beneficiaries must make use of Copernicus and/or Galileo/EGNOS (other data and services may additionally be used).
described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes.
4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion
described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes.
5a. Evaluation and award: Award criteria, scoring and thresholds
are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes.
5b. Evaluation and award: Submission and evaluation processes
are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual.
5c. Evaluation and award: Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement
described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes.
6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants
The granting authority may, up to 4 years after the end of the action, object to a transfer of ownership or to the exclusive licensing of results, as set out in the specific provision of Annex 5.
Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum as defined in the Decision of 7 July 2021 authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) – and in actions under the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2021-2025) [[This decision is available on the Funding and Tenders Portal, in the reference documents section for Horizon Europe, under ‘Simplified costs decisions’ or through this link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/guidance/ls-decision_he_en.pdf]].
described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes.
Specific conditions
described in the [specific topic of the Work Programme]
Some activities resulting from this topic may involve using classified background and/or producing of security sensitive results (EUCI and SEN). Please refer to the related…
Themes
- Awareness campaigns
- OSINT
- Tag Action Open-Source Intelligence
- critical entities
- critical infrastructure
- emergency plans and business continuity models
- lone wolf and hybrid scenarios
- security
- training curricula
- Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP)
- Incident Response
- Operators of critical infrastructure
- AI
- DigitalAgenda