Valencia – 02.06.21.  This morning took place the kick-off meeting of the PRAETORIAN project (Protection of critical infrastructures from advanced combined cyber and physical threats), an initiative co-funded by the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Commission that has brought together twenty-three partners from seven countries with the common objective of increasing the security and resilience of European critical infrastructures, facilitating coordinated protection against physical, cyber or combined threats.

This project, led by EDF (Électricité de France) and in which the Fundación Valenciaport participates, has a total budget of €9,000,000 and is expected to be developed over a period of 24 months, ending in May 2023.

PRAETORIAN will amplify the results obtained in the previous SAURON project, which focused only on port infrastructures, analysing different sectors such as energy, health or transport (including ports and airports) and providing an economic, technological, political and social approach.

Thanks to PRAETORIAN, a set of specific tools will be developed with the aim of providing real-time information to facilitate decision-making. These tools are classified into 4 elements: an information system of the physical part, such as CCTV cameras or sensors, called Physical Situational Awareness or PSA; an information system of the cyber part, such as servers, called Cyber Situational Awareness or CSA; a system that correlates the information of the two previous ones (physical and cyber domain), called Hybrid Situational Awareness or HSA; and an early warning system of coordination between the different responsible parties, called Early Warning System or EWS.

During the development of the above tools, threat and vulnerability assessments will be carried out for the three sectors mentioned above, including the development of digital twins of the infrastructures. These tools will provide constant information to security managers to enable them to be aware of existing threats at all times and thus facilitate their decision-making. In addition, they will have an early warning system for the coordination of authorities, which will reduce response times.

In this way, PRAETORIAN specifically addresses (preventing, detecting, responding to and mitigating) cyber and physical attacks, as well as possible extreme weather events, such as natural disasters, that could affect any critical infrastructure and that could lead to the disruption of the transport chain, energy supply or healthcare capacity.

The PRAETORIAN consortium consists of 23 partners from 7 European countries (Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Croatia and Greece): Électricité de France S.A.; ETRA Investigación y Desarrollo S.A.; Universidad Politécnica de Valencia; AENA S.M.E. S.A.; KONČAR – Inženjering za energetiku i transport d.d.; Fundación Valenciaport; Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V.; Institute of Communications and Computer Systems; Katholieke Universiteit Leuven; Međunarodna zračna luka Zagreb d.d.; Thales France; IDEMIA Identity & Security Germany AG; Hrvatska elektroprivreda d.d.; Hrvatska gorska služba spašavanjae;  Austrian Institute of Technology; Consorcio Provincial de Bomberos de Valencia; Fundación para la investigación del Hospital Universitario La Fe de la Comunidad Valenciana; The Lyon fire department; RiniGARD; Medical University Graz; SubCMarine; Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux and Klagenfurt Hospital.