Enforcers project plans to strengthen European cybersecurity

The European research and innovation project Enhanced Cooperation for Cybersecurity (Enforcers) kicked off on Feb. 10-11 at Wibu-Systems AG in Karlsruhe, Germany. The project brings together a consortium of industrial manufacturers, cybersecurity providers, and applied research organizations to address one of Europe’s most pressing challenges—ensuring resilient, trustworthy software throughout the lifecycle of industrial automation systems. The group met at the kickoff to settle on Enforcers’ strategic roadmap for the next three years, and set the stage for close cross-border collaboration enabled by European Union (EU) funding.

The organization reports it’s designed to go beyond isolated security measures. Its primary objective is closing the loop between cybersecurity incident detection, coordinated response, certification and secure software redistribution in industrial environments. This is particularly relevant for automation and manufacturing, where software must often be updated across segmented, partially disconnected or heterogeneous operations technology (OT) networks.

Consequently, the project’s core is a cybersecurity system platform that links multiple trusted instances into a securely chained “system circle” that includes:

• Private security operation centers (SOC) that collect, correlate, and classify incident and vulnerability data;
• Secure elements that act as trust anchors at OT edges and gateways;
• Automated playbooks for vulnerability mitigation, certification and secure software updates; and
• Cross-border, data-exchange mechanisms that allow SOCs and stakeholders to cooperate while respecting data sovereignty.

Enforcers adds its approach directly supports compliance with the Network and Information Security 2 (NIS2) directive, and anticipates requirements of the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), while remaining adaptable to future regulatory and technological developments.

“Enforcers brings together technologies, processes and stakeholders into an operational cybersecurity framework,” explains Alvaro Forero, project coordinator at Wibu-Systems. “As coordinator, our responsibility is to ensure we’re building a cooperative system, where incident handling, trust anchors and secure software deployment work together across organizational and national boundaries. The kickoff meeting confirmed a shared understanding that cybersecurity resilience must be engineered into the full lifecycle of industrial software.”

As project coordinator, Wibu-Systems is contributing its longstanding expertise in software protection, licensing and secure update mechanisms for industrial environments, while ensuring technical coherence and cross-partner integration across the project. Participating companies such as Balluff (Germany and Hungary), Schneider Electric (France), TTTECH Computertechnik (Austria) and Technology Nexus Secured Business Solutions (Sweden) are contributing real-world requirements from automation, manufacturing and industrial networking. Technology and cybersecurity specialists including Infineon Technologies (Germany), Langlauf Security Automation (Germany), Dynamiki (Greece), AITAD (Germany) and ResilTech (Italy) are providing expertise about AI and embedded systems, secure elements and cryptography, and security operations centers (SOC) and incident responses. Applied research is coming from subcontractors such as Fraunhofer SIT, while VDMA contributes its industrial network and policy interfacing.

Its cybersecurity and technology partners view Enforcers as a commitment to European cooperation. “We look forward to contributing and working alongside our partners to strengthen Europe’s industrial cybersecurity,” adds Francesco Brancati, security solution manager and R&D program manager at ResilTech Srl, who also emphasizes the importance of cross-border collaboration as a prerequisite for resilient industrial systems.

The project integrates three essential activities:

• Structural activities such as system requirements and architecture design;
• Practical implementation efforts including SOC integration, digital elements and secure connectors; and
• Quality-oriented tasks focused on dissemination, standards compliance monitoring and training.

Early milestones for Enforcers include:

• Defining legal and technical requirements,
• Designing its Cybersec System architecture, and
• Setting up initial SOC and platform components, which will be followed by demonstrators and validation in later phases.

Its industrial partners also view Enforcers as a strategic investment in long-term resilience. “Enforcers is a great opportunity for Balluff and our partners to build a strong network in the cybersecurity domain,” adds Dr. Markus Jung, engineering VP at Balluff. “The project will support us in further strengthening our cybersecurity measures, and enhancing best practices across our industrial automation products, processes and manufacturing sites. The strong consortium enables us to anticipate emerging trends in the coming years, well beyond CRA requirements, and ultimately helps us empower our customers to increase their own cybersecurity.”

Over the next three years, Enforcers plans to deliver technical demonstrators, best practices, training activities, and contributions to standardization and certification discussions. By combining industrial deployment experience with cybersecurity expertise, the project aims to create results that are replicable across sectors, and strengthen Europe’s digital sovereignty in industrial software and automation.