WithSecure, formerly known as F-Secure Business, has cofounded AI-NET – a European research project involving 90 organizations working to support Europe’s digital transformation.
Digital transformation is, in many ways, expected to shape the future of Europe and other countries throughout the globe. A macro-economic analysis sponsored by the European Commission* projected that high-impact, disruptive technologies (such as artificial intelligence) could contribute to a 14% increase in Europe’s gross domestic product from 2017 to 2030, but only if supported by specific actions and investments.
Security is one such form of support to ensure the sustainable adoption of emerging technologies, according to WithSecure Chief Technology Officer Christine Bejerasco.
“Security isn’t something we can afford to neglect or underinvest in if we expect to reap the benefits of new and future technologies,” she said. “We have already witnessed time and time again what cyber security issues manifest when a new technology that has not been built with security in mind gains wider adoption. Nobody wants to find themselves owning more technologies that increase their attack surface and expose them further to criminals and other adversaries. This simple reality connects the success of Europe’s digital transformation with cyber security.”
AI-NET is an 80-million-euro public-private partnership with 90 companies, research organizations, and universities from Germany, Sweden, Finland, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Poland. The project is running under CELTIC-NEXT, the EUREKA Cluster for Next Generation Communications for a secured, trusted, and sustainable digital society, and is partly publicly funded by the research ministries/ agencies BMBF (Germany), VINNOVA (Sweden), Business Finland (Finland), BPI (France), The National Centre for Research and Development (Poland), and Innovate UK (United Kingdom).
The participants include Nokia Bell Labs France, Institut Mines Telecom/Telecom Paris, INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique), CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd., Airbus Defence and Space Oy, Insta Advance Oy, Technische Universität München – LKN, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Technical University Berlin, DFKI (Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz), Ruhr Universität Bochum, and more.
WithSecure is a key partner in the AINET-ANTILLAS subproject, which aims to accelerate digital transformation in Europe with intelligent and secure network automation.
As a Finnish participant, WithSecure is to receive funding from Business Finland for project-related research, including:
- Implementing machine learning-based methods for security monitoring, attack detection and analysis of suspicious software in resource-constraint environments (such as end-user devices).
- Utilizing security monitoring for obtaining real-time inventory and typical and anomalous network communication in organizational infrastructures.
- Improving the security, reliability, and efficiency of machine learning models used in next-gen networks and clouds.
More information on AI-NET is available at https://ai-net.tech/.
