About the SFI-NORCICS - The Norwegian Centre for Cybersecurity in Critical Sectors

Research and development in the area of security and resilience of Critical Sectors (CRiSec) is paramount to enhancing the country’s cyber security posture and the Norwegian businesses’ capability to innovate. NORCICS is the Norwegian centre for research-based innovation with the overarching objective to develop innovative cybersecurity solutions at varying technology readiness levels within a dynamically evolving cyber-physical security ecosystem. We achieve this by focusing on long-term research and close alliances between research-intensive enterprises and prominent research groups in academia.

In NORCICS, research on cybersecurity technologies is combined with research on human aspects of these technologies, to provide methods and tools that cover a wide variety of concepts, are re-usable across different sectors, and are validated in several demonstrators across different CriSec. The primary research areas that NORCICS focuses on cover a wide range of cybersecurity domains, enabling technologies, and CriSec. Specifically, the initial application domains are i) Critical Infrastructures; ii) Industrial Control Systems; iii) the Internet of Things; and iv) Smart Environments. Furthermore, the initial sectorial domains are i) Energy; ii) Healthcare; iii) Manufacturing and Supply chain; iv) Smart Districts and Public Safety. The scientific content and organization of research activities, as well as the research approach and scientific methodology, have been structured in a manner that promotes technology spillovers and the transfer of best practices, while avoiding duplication of effort.

In terms of interdisciplinarity, NORCICS’s objectives are twofold. Initially to further the expertise and competence of the involved professional disciplines themselves, by transferring knowledge and by developing common methods and operational knowledge frameworks across them. Additionally, NORCICS carries out research and innovation activities that are problem-focused and address issues of social and technical relevance, involving two or more professional and academic disciplines in each focus area. The investigated subjects are interdisciplinary by nature, with cyber security being the prism through which we approach them. Furthermore, the specific tasks across the research areas are primarily driven by the end users, towards directly transferring research results from the laboratory to the real world.

Additionally, the research areas are not only relevant from a technical point of view but also to policy making, as NORCICS focuses on critical sectors with overlapping requirements and extended interdependencies. In summary, NORCICS focuses on critical societal functions, bringing together the expertise of cybersecurity specialists and domain specific specialists, whilst also incorporating the operational experience of end users across the research areas. Such a platform allows the investigation of important cybersecurity issues, how these interact and cause cascading failures across sectors, but also how these interactions can be leveraged to provide implementable, synergetic solutions.

We are looking forward to the exciting and creative years ahead, and we will keep you updated on our work at: https://www.ntnu.edu/norcics and also at our LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube channels.