A project to build and maintain an innovation-driven network of LEAs combating cybercrime - accelerating the EU’s ability to counteract growing pressures of cyber threats. Heeding advice from EUROPOL’s EC3 flagship report Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment, CYCLOPES create synergies between LEAs from MS and connect industry and academia by stimulating and sustaining dialogue on pressing security matters threatening the stability of Europe and Citizen safety. Dedicated teams will scour markets, identifying solutions and research activities to highlight actions and innovative products to assist LEAs tackle the complexity of cybercrime. Besides technology, the project supports continued development of LEAs, working closely with practitioners to define current capacities and elicit capability gaps and requirements in crucial areas: procedures, training, legal and standardisation. Consequently, other objectives are: identification of priorities for standardisation; recommendations for innovation uptake and implementation; social, ethical and legal reports providing guidance and training suggestions for cybercrime investigators; dissemination of results through workshops, conferences, webinars, publications, policy papers and media. All outcomes will be suitably considered for exploitation - helping to propel the EU in the fight against cybercrime. Practitioners’ workshops are a driving force behind the project and cover three 3 domains: 1) cybercrime affecting people directly, 2) cybercrime affecting systems, 3) digital forensics. The project is to synchronise with other activities conducted by relevant parties EUROPOL, INTERPOL, CEPOL, ECTEG, ENISA; networks: ENLETS, ENFSI, I-LEAD, iLEAnet, EU-HYBNET, covering topics that go beyond efforts of these initiatives and preventing duplication. This also applies to projects where activities align with CYCLOPES (i-ProcureNet, Stairs4Security) and future projects funded by the EC, especially in the area of AI.

EU-HYBNET is a Pan-European network of security practitioners, stakeholders, academics, industry players, and SME actors across EU collaborating with each other in ever increasing numbers to counter hybrid threats. EU-HYBNET aims to build an empowered, sustainable network beyond the scope of the project through its on-going association with a key partner, The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, and it will: define common requirements that can fill knowledge gaps, deal with performance needs, and enhance capabilities of innovation endeavours; monitor significant developments in research and innovation; deliver recommendations for uptake and industrialisation of the most promising innovations that address the needs of practitioners, and determine associated priorities for standardisation; establish conditions for enhanced interaction among its members; and persistently strive to increase its membership and continually build network capacity through knowledge exchange incl. exercises. EU-HYBNET's principal objectives align with the H2020 SEC-SU-GM01-2019 call and are of crucial relevance to it. A technology and innovations watch, facilitated by scientific research, will ensure smooth execution of searching, monitoring, identifying and assessing innovations both under development or already proven, including the level of technology readiness for uptake or industrialisation. EU-HYBNET will bring together practitioners and stakeholders to identify and define their most urgent requirements for countering hybrid threats by undertaking an in-depth analysis of gaps and needs and prioritising those that are crucial to address through effective research and innovation initiatives, including arranging training and exercise events to test the most promising innovations (technical and social) which will lead to creation of a roadmap for success and solid recommendations for uptake, industrialisation and standarisation across the European Union.

Mobile devices, especially smartphones represent a unique challenge for law enforcement. Criminal offenders use phones to communicate, coordinate, organise and execute criminal actions. This is especially true for organised crime and terrorist organisations. This development provides new challenges for criminal prosecution and it is vital to empower law enforcement to access the data stored on mobile devices to use it as court evidence in a trustworthy and reliable manner. The overarching objective of FORMOBILE is to establish a complete end to end forensic investigation chain, targeting for mobile devices. To achieve this goal three objectives will be pursued. Novel tools shall be developed that include the acquisition of previously unavailable mobile data, unlocking mobile devices, as well as the decoding and analysis of mobile data. Based on the definition of requirements of law enforcement and legal and ethical issues a new mobile forensics standard shall be developed. With the developments of the new standard and the new tools, training for police and criminal prosecution will be established, providing the end users with the latest knowledge in a novel and an innovative curriculum to ensure a quality standard of investigations. The European Union has developed as a Security Union, building on the European Agenda on Security. This aims to ensure that people live in an area of freedom, security and justice, without internal frontiers. To strengthen digital forensics in the context of criminal investigations is crucial to achieve this vision. FORMOBILE contributes to the fight against virtually all forms of crime. This is because mobile devices are widely used in crimes, especially in the arrangement of conspiracies. Yet, there are crimes more closely related to mobile devices; this includes child abuse and emerging forms of cybercrime in particular. To fight crime effectively, law enforcement has to be empowered to access all evidence stored on mobile devices.

The increasing complexity of security challenges combined with the accumulation of significant amounts of digital data calls for better and more widespread use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities for law enforcement agencies (LEAs). AI can provide benefits to LEAs at all levels given the right understanding, tools, data and protection while increased awareness of criminal misuse is providing an immediate and concerning threat that must be tackled rapidly. Furthermore, a community that brings together LEAs, researchers, industry, security practitioners and other actors in the security ecosystem under a coordinated and strategic effort is essential for the realisation of these efforts into operational practices. STARLIGHT presents an inclusive and sustainable vision for increasing the awareness, capability, adoption and long-term impact of AI in Europe for LEAs. Five strategic goals underpin STARLIGHT’s approach: (1) Improve the widespread UNDERSTANDing of AI across LEAs to reinforce their investigative and cybersecurity operations and the need to uphold legal, ethical and societal values; (2) Provide opportunities to LEAs to EXPLOIT AI tools and solutions in their operational work that are trustworthy, transparent and human-centric; (3) Ensure that LEAs can PROTECT their own AI systems through privacy- and security-by-design approaches, better cybersecurity tools and knowledge; (4) Raise LEAs’ expertise and capacity to COMBAT the misuse of AI-supported crime and terrorism; and (5) BOOST AI for LEAs in Europe through high-quality datasets, an interoperable and standardised framework for long term sustainability of solutions, and the creation of an AI hub for LEAs that supports a strong AI security industry and enhances the EU’s strategic autonomy in AI. STARLIGHT will ensure European LEAs lead the way in AI innovation, autonomy and resilience, addressing the challenges of now and the future, prioritising the safety and security of Europe for all.

Criminals and terrorists use more and more data hiding methods (steganography) for concealing incriminating information in innocent-looking digital media files such as images, video, audio, and text files. UNCOVERs main objective is to fill existing gaps in the ability of Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) for detecting the presence of such hidden information (i.e., steganalysis). To carry out a full investigation into criminal and terrorist activities, LEAs currently use available (commercial) tools to detect hidden information in collected digital media. However, these tools detect only a limited number of hiding methods, are slow, and offer no indication of confidence. Moreover, many commercial tools lag a decade behind the scientific state-of-the-art. The members of UNCOVER are committed to bridge these gaps and thus substantially increase the technological autonomy of LEAs in the field of digital media steganalysis. With its consortium of 22 partners including LEAs, forensic institutes, leading researchers working at universities and research institutions, as well as industrial companies, UNCOVER sets out to outperform available steganalysis solutions in terms of performance (number of detectable steganographic methods, detection accuracy), usability, operational needs, privacy protection, and chain-of-custody considerations. The developed detection and investigation tools will be integrated into a flexible and user-friendly platform. End-users play a key role throughout the project cycle: from proposal writing over analysis of user requirements and tools development through the final evaluation. In particular, regular feedback cycles with LEAs, forensics institutes and external stakeholders will ensure that the developed solutions can be integrated into the daily criminal investigation pipeline of LEAs. A set of clearly defined Key Performance Indicators allows an objective evaluation of progress and end results against the defined objectives.