European Cyber Security Organisation (ECSO)
2016-01-01 08:00 - 2026-12-31 17:00 (Europe/Oslo) | ECSO, Avenue des Arts 46 Kunstlaan, Brussels, 1000, Belgium
(NETWORK)

ECSO. “ECSO”. Accessed 14.08.2025. https://ecs-org.eu.

The right place to be for cybersecurity in Europe

The European Cyber Security Organisation (ECSO) is a European, cross-sectoral membership organisation that contributes to developing cybersecurity communities and building the European cybersecurity ecosystem.

ECSO federates the European Cybersecurity public and private sector, including large companies, SMEs and start-ups, research centres, universities, end-users and operators of essential services, clusters and associations, as well as the local, regional and national public administrations across the European Union Members States and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

Mission

ECSO contributes to Europe’s Digital Sovereignty & Strategic Autonomy and to strenghtening its cyber resilience by:

Bringing together the private and public sectors, facilitating their dialogue and joint actions

Empowering communities and shaping the European cybersecurity ecosystem

Federating and providing a platform for collaboration for various stakeholders

European Cybersecurity Investment Platform
2016-09-01 08:00 - 2026-12-31 17:00
(INITIATIVE) (INVESTMENT)

ECSO. “European Cybersecurity Investment Platform.” Accessed 14.08.2025. https://ecs-org.eu/activities/european-cybersecurity-investment-platform/.

About the initiative

The European Cybersecurity Investment Platform (ECIP) is set to be a fund-of-funds mechanism proposed by ECSO as a response to the investment gap in the EU cybersecurity market. With a target size of at least €1 billion, the ECIP aims to strengthen the competitiveness of our cybersecurity market and overall European strategic autonomy.

Since 2016, ECSO has been working with major private investors, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Commission, alerting on the need to increase investments allocated to cybersecurity. In 2020, the Letter of Intentoutlining this proposal to the European Commission garnered the support of 49 prominent public and private stakeholders representing the European cybersecurity landscape.

Building upon ECSO’s initiative, the EIB European Investment Advisory Hub, at the official request of the ECSO-Member Basque Cybersecurity Centre, commenced a feasibility study in October 2021 to assess the market viability and potential structure of the ECIP. The study’s findings unequivocally confirmed the need for the creation of the ECIP. Discover in this page how ECSO continues working with the European cybersecurity ecosystem in concrete steps to establish the European Cybersecurity Investment Platform.

Objectives

Strengthen European cybersecurity market to attract and retain top talent, develop critical competencies, and ensure the strategic positioning of European solutions by enhancing investments in European cybersecurity start-ups and SMEs.

Support European start-ups to consolidate their operations, scale up, and expand their market presence by offering stronger growth-focused financing options, particularly for Series A+. The ECIP is an opportunity to fund late stage companies and create European champions.

Strengthen venture capital capabilities by investing in the existing or emerging European funds specialised in cybersecurity.

Create leverage effect and serve as an incentive among the LPs to invest bigger tickets into the funds by increasing trust in the cybersecurity market.

Stimulate the emergence of new venture capital funds and investment initiatives specialising in cybersecurity by promoting and strengthening the cybersecurity segment.

Support synergy creation in relevant R&D&I funding schemes across Europe.

IMS Commercialisation
2020-06-18 08:00 - 2021-06-01 17:00
(PROJECT)

The IMS commercialisation project was managed by an affiliated company that VentureNet acquired in 2023. The project was co-financed by the Norwegian development bank, Innovation Norway.

The project developed a prototype of an Innovation Management System, which provided the technical foundation and building blocks for VentureNet’s Information Management System (IMS) and secure data exchange platform.

Among the unique and groundbreaking IMS features are dynamic data enrichment capabilities with human-in-the-loop (HITL) models, low-code/no-code development functionality, and container technology for rapid deployment of digital applications, which can be customized for specific customer needs at a fraction of the time and cost of comparable application development platforms.

Furthermore, digital applications that are developed by VentureNet can be integrated seamlessly with VentureNet’s marketplace to enable secure data exchange in digital marketplaces that adhere to EU data privacy regulations and common standards for International Data Spaces, Cybersecurity, Safety, Data Governance, Interoperability, and Cyber Resilience.

Contact us to learn more about the IMS and how your organisation or region can leverage the IMS to manage your data, develop data-driven systems with trustworthy AI, build a virtual innovation ecosystem with resilient digital supply chains and access to secure international digital marketplaces.

Norwegian Centre for Cybersecurity in Critical Sectors
2020-09-01 08:00 - 2028-12-31 17:00
(NETWORK) (PROJECT)

NTNU SFI NORCICS. “NORCICS”. Accessed 14.08.2025. https://www.ntnu.edu/norcics.

Centre for Research-based Innovation (SFI)

NORCICS’s vision is to contribute to making Norway the most securely digitalized country in the world, by improving the cyber security and resilience of its critical sectors, through supporting research-based innovation.

Our primary objective is to enhance the capability of private and public sector stakeholders to respond to the current and future cybersecurity risks by developing, validating, and operationalizing innovative socio-technical solutions.

The following secondary objectives will lead to the achievement of the primary objective above:

To generate new knowledge about interdependencies and dynamics in Critical Sectors; and how Cyber Physical Systems especially in Critical Sectors can be attacked;

To design, develop, and test innovative methods and tools for the detection, prevention, and mitigation of cyberattacks against industrial control systems in Critical Sectors, and to validate these in industrially relevant environments;

To demonstrate and validate the efficiency and effectiveness of interlinked cybersecurity measures for control systems in Critical Sectors for selected industrially relevant environments;

To develop novel methods and tools for the improvement of cybersecurity training and awareness, and means for validation of such methods;

To effectively transfer the knowledge created within NORCICS among its user partners, sectoral and industrial clusters, and relevant stakeholders in Norway.

NORCICS has the following work packages (WP):

Research-based innovation roadmap

Foundations

Technologies, applications, and services

Demonstration environments

Dissemination and knowledge transfer

Project management
