European Cyber Security Month: meet HaDEA’s projects enhancing cybersecurity of critical infrastructures

This year, we celebrate the 11^th anniversary of the European Cyber Security Month (ECSM), a campaign to raise awareness of cybersecurity and remind us that cybersecurity concerns us all. This year’s ECSM focuses on social engineering – threats that attempt to exploit a human behaviour to gain access to information or services. Social engineering manipulates victims into making mistakes or handing over sensitive information.

This provides an excellent opportunity to showcase HaDEA's cybersecurity projects. The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme 2014-2020 is among the European Union's initiatives which enhanced cyber resilience and promoted staff awareness for resisting social engineering tactics to prevent cyberattacks.

HaDEA has been funding 46 CEF-projects to enhance the cybersecurity of critical infrastructures in the energy, health, finance, transport, and water supply sectors.

Successful projects

• Improving cybersecurity capabilities of "Sestre milosrdnice Univ. Hospital Center" to meet national and EU requirements  improved cybersecurity management in one of the Croatian hospitals in line with the Directive on Security of Network and Information Systems (NIS Directive). This project has developed new IT solutions for risk assessment of cybersecurity threats and staff members have participated in training in cybersecurity. This increased the safety and guarantees the wellbeing of Croatian patients and visiting tourists in need of healthcare.
• “Cybersecurity capability elevation to support critical infrastructure” A-0212) is an example from the financial sector. It is working to increase cybersecurity resilience of the Raiffeisenbank Austria d.d. (RBA) in Croatia as an Operator of Essential Services in the financial sector. One of the activities includes development of a Cyber Security Awareness Programme targeting the users of bank services in Croatia, but also in the EU.
• ITAIR ISAC - Italian Airports Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (ISAC) is an example from the aviation sector. Thanks to the EU support the cyber capabilities and preparedness to the cyberattacks of the Italian Aviation Sector were increased. Now passengers traveling from and to Italian airports can feel even safer and enjoy their travels.

Be Smarter than a Hacker!

Top Three Cybersecurity Threats

1. Ransomware uses extorsion techniques taking control of a target’s assets and demanding payment in exchange for the return of the asset’s availability.
2. Malware is malicious code that has an adverse impact on the integrity or availability of a system. For instance, viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and spyware.
3. Social engineering exploits a human error or behaviour to gain access to information or services. It manipulates victims into making mistakes or handing over sensitive information. Examples include phishing, smishing (via SMS) and impersonation (ENISA's Threat Landscape 2022).