Eviden, the Atos Group product brand leading in advanced computing, cybersecurity products, mission-critical systems and vision AI, announced that it has won a call for projects from the European Cybersecurity Competence Center and Network (ECCC) to improve the cyber protection and resilience of European critical infrastructures.
This ECCC initiative aims to develop a strong and coherent community around cybersecurity issues by strengthening collaboration, knowledge sharing and the deployment of cybersecurity solutions on a European scale.
The CIPHER(Cybersecurity Intelligence, Protection and Holistic Enterprise Resilience) consortium will directly contribute to the ECCC’s mission to strengthen Europe’s digital resilience by providing a standardized, collaborative facility for testing, validating, and certifying the cybersecurity posture of essential service operators.
Led by Eviden, CIPHER brings together 13 partners from seven European countries, including critical infrastructure operators, research organizations, and cybersecurity SMEs, ensuring a strong, multi-sectoral approach to advancing Europe’s cyber resilience.
Eviden’s experience in applied cybersecurity on mission-critical systems, including its radio communications expertise, supports ECCC’s objective to increase the European Union’s cybersecurity capabilities, particularly in the context of the NIS2 directive (Network and Information Security 2). This requires critical service providers to implement holistic security governance and cybersecurity risk management plans in the face of the increasing frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks.
“It is with great pride that we join ECCC’s CIPHER initiative to strengthen the cybersecurity capabilities of essential services across the entire spectrum, including radio equipment, in response to increasingly sophisticated threats targeting core IT infrastructures,” Bernard Payer, senior vice president, head of mission-critical systems at Eviden, Atos Group, said in a media statement. “Being recognized as a key player in the protection of European critical cyber assets reflects our ability to secure the digital chain of trust through a sovereign and certified offer that integrates the power of AI.”
Present on many critical systems, radio communications (Wi-Fi, 4G, 5G, etc.) have become increasingly complex to audit and monitor from a cybersecurity perspective. Customers will benefit from an end-to-end assessment of their vulnerability surface, enabling the identification of potential risks to better prepare for cyberattacks – especially those spread by radio. This approach helps prevent malicious acts that can undermine the operational availability of systems and data confidentiality.
Eviden will be involved in the development and integration of the CIPHER platform, which comprises two core components. This includes an automated vulnerability assessment mechanism and an automated penetration testing framework.
The automated vulnerability assessment mechanism works to continuously identify vulnerabilities in systems, applications and components. It will rely on active and passive scans to detect known vulnerabilities, misconfigurations and points of exposure. The assessment is enriched with threat intelligence data and risk management tools for real-time contextualization. For radio networks, the system will support the cybersecurity assessment of wireless interfaces, complementing that performed by AI agents. Vulnerabilities will be automatically classified and prioritized according to their severity and integrated into an AI-driven classification.
The automated penetration testing framework focuses on generating continuous, scalable security penetration tests that simulate real-world attack scenarios against critical assets. This framework will include the selection, adaptation and orchestration of open source and customized penetration testing tools. It will also implement attack scenarios and be capable of simulating various classes of threats (networks, applications, radio, etc.). The test results will feed into the CIPHER platform’s risk assessment engine and AI-based recommendation systems to refine risk mitigation strategies, enrich and contextualize learnings, and refine results and reports.
The solution will be developed in line with the ethical and sustainability principles promoted by the European Union. The AI-driven agents deployed in the platform will be fully aligned with the EU AI Act and GDPR to ensure transparency, accountability, and the ethical use of AI in cybersecurity operations. Furthermore, by embedding circular economy principles and energy-efficient digital practices, CIPHER promotes sustainable cybersecurity innovation and minimizes the environmental footprint of ICT operations.
