CEF highlight of the month: ensuring protection and privacy of critical services and infrastructure with DNS4EU

Awarded in 2022 within CEF Digital’s “backbone networks for pan-European cloud federations” topic, the project DNS4EU is deploying the first EU-wide protective DNS ecosystem for public services. This will contribute to and strengthen European sovereignty by providing a safe and open alternative DNS resolver for people, public administrations and organisations servicing citizens and businesses.  

The Basics of the DNS4EU Protective DNS Ecosystem: What You Need to Know  

A DNS resolver is a service that helps computers find a website's address on the internet when the website's name is typed in instead of its actual address. 

A protective DNS ecosystem is a network of systems and services that work together to protect users from online threats such as phishing, malware, and other types of cyberattacks. This ecosystem will filter and block malicious websites and domains, ensuring a safer browsing experience.  

Who is involved?   

The project uses the complementary know-how and experience of 13 partners from 10 European countries, which are: CZ.NIC (CZ), CVUT (CZ), DNSC (RO), NASK (PL), HUN-REN(HU), ABILAB (IT), DESEC (DE), TIME.LEX (BE), CESNET (CZ), F-SECURE (FI), Centro Nacional de Ciberseguranca (PT), the Ministry of Electronic Governance (BG) and Whalebone (CZ), the project coordinator.  

So far, more than 20 national cybersecurity centres from about 15 different Member States are in the later stages of the onboarding cycle and seven CERTs have joined the Malware Information Sharing Platform (MISP) to exchange Threat Intelligence and enable immediate protection against emerging threats.  

By the end of 2024, the DNS4EU stakeholder community has grown to over 500 members, reflecting the widespread interest and support for this very promising initiative.  

Background  

The digital strand of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF Digital) is part of the second generation of the Connecting Europe Facility. CEF Digital aims to leverage public and private investments in digital connectivity infrastructures of common European interest.