VentureNet

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.

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

AI-Mind: Artificial Intelligence for Dementia Prevention
2021-03-01 08:00 - 2026-02-28 17:00
(PROJECT)

Accelopment Schweiz AG. “AI-Mind”. Accessed 13.08.2025. https://www.ai-mind.eu.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 964220. This website reflects only the author’s view and the Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

What is the challenge?

There are over 50 million people worldwide living with dementia and by 2030 this number is expected to reach 82 million.

The ageing brain becomes vulnerable to decline and keeping independency in daily life can become a challenge for the elderly. People with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), an intermediate condition between normal brain ageing and dementia, may develop dementia in the future.

There is an urgent need for early risk assessment and intervention. Current practices with time-consuming patient investigations focus on late symptoms management due to a lack of diagnostic tools. This causes numerous implications in terms of familial, medical and care costs.

With AI-Mind we aim to reduce the disease’s burden by developing novel, AI-based tools to support healthcare professionals in their diagnosis and offering timely interventions to patients.

At the heart of AI-Mind is our research study, that

Takes place in Norway, Finland, Italy and Spain and will involve 1,000 participants.

Helps to develop and validate artificial intelligence (AI) based tools to predict who is likely to develop dementia.

The AI-Mind project aims to ease the burden of dementia by creating innovative, AI-driven tools that assist healthcare professionals in predicting dementia risks in patients affected by mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Most dementia treatments focus on managing symptoms once they appear, leaving little room for early prevention. AI-Mind seeks to transform this process by replacing complex and inefficient screening methods with advanced, automated tools powered by AI. These tools will address the critical need for early and precise diagnosis, allowing doctors to identify patients at high risk of developing dementia with greater confidence.

European Cluster for Securing Critical Infrastructures (ECSCI)
2022-03-03 08:00 - 2026-12-31 17:00
(NETWORK)

ECSCI. “ECSCI”. Accessed 14.08.2025. https://www.ecsci.eu.

The main objective of the ECSCI cluster is to create synergies and foster emerging disruptive solutions to security issues via cross-projects collaboration and innovation. Research activities will focus on how to protect critical infrastructures and services, highlighting the different approaches between the clustered projects and establishing tight and productive connections with closely related and complementary EU funded projects. To promote the activities of the cluster, ECSCI will organize international conferences, and national or international workshops, involving both policy makers, industry and academic, practitioners, and representatives from the European Commission.

VentureNet: Reducing barriers to innovation and business development through secure data exchange
2022-09-01 08:00 - 2023-09-30 08:00
(PROJECT)

The VentureNet data exchange project was a research project completed in 2023 in collaboration with SINTEF and the Norwegian Centre for Research and Innovation in Cybersecurity in Critical Sectors (SFI NORCICS) based at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). The project received co-financing from the Research Council of Norway and Innlandet County through the FORREGION program.

Background

A major EU industrial research project on data harmonization, euBusinessGraph, identified major challenges with access to business data, citing that “it is extremely expensive, time consuming and error prone to find, interpret and reconcile”, especially across industries, geographic regions and languages.

Machine learning (ML) plays an important role in automating data processing tasks such as natural language processing (NLP), but human input is needed to train ML algorithms and thereby improve the accuracy of ML models. One of the challenges identified by data scientists is a lack of machine learning models with humans-in-the-loop (HITL). 80% of the cost of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) projects is time spent by data scientists finding, interpreting and harmonizing data. A lack of HITL limits the effectiveness of ML models and their potential to reduce cost in Big Data and AI projects.

VentureNet aims to create a virtual business accelerator hub powered by its proprietary Information Management System (IMS), which centralizes access to multiple digital ecosystems, facilitating data exchange and reducing manual data entry. Developed in collaboration with SINTEF and NTNU, the project focuses on creating a secure data exchange framework with Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) capabilities that can be scaled up in European data markets.

Project Results

The project delivered a report introducing a novel framework and new technical solution for data exchange that will facilitate dynamic harmonization and enrichment of business data with HITL ML models. The envisioned solution is a digital B2B workspace and marketplace that will automate data management tasks and processes and facilitate involvement of non-technical data providers (small businesses) in data enrichment with HITL models.

SINTEF compared VentureNet’s IMS to leading low-code platforms and AI solutions, such as Oracle APEX, AWS Amplify, Open AI GPT, Sheet GPT, and Google Natural Language API and concluded the following:

We compared VentureNet against a few low-code/no-code platforms. Low-code/no-code platforms significantly accelerate software development by simplifying and automating code generation, making it possible for non-developers to create applications, thereby democratizing development and reducing the technical skill barrier. However, these platforms can limit customization capabilities, restrict advanced functionality, and lead to vendor lock-in situations, potentially impeding scalability, and long-term growth for more complex or unique business requirements.

Potential for higher accuracy and filtering of hallucinations, using HITL, especially in sensitive domains, such as healthcare.

The principal advantage of the VentureNet platform lies in its comprehensive integration capabilities. It can fulfill all project requirements, including form processing, API management, low-code graphical user interface elements, and data enrichment. Unlike other generic platforms, VentureNet enables the development of highly customized solutions tailored to specific project needs.

Although it is possible to assemble similar platforms using excellent off-the-shelf tools, coordinating, and integrating these disparate components requires significant time and effort. Additionally, the complexities associated with billing processes can often pose substantial challenges. VentureNet solves these concerns by offering a unique solution that simplifies project management and reduces operational overhead. This approach ensures a streamlined workflow and efficient project execution.

Contact VentureNet to learn more about the project results and collaboration opportunities.

EBRAINS: A Research Infrastructure to Advance Neuroscience and Brain Health
2022-09-01 08:00 - 2026-12-31 17:00
(PROJECT)

EBRAINS. “EBRAINS.” Accessed 13.08.2025. https://www.ebrains.eu.

EBRAINS is an international non-profit association (AISBL), headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. It is made up of 8 Full Members and 35 Associate Members. The Research Infrastructure is organised around a central hub that coordinates a pan-European network of services delivered through National Nodes. EBRAINS is governed by three bodies, the General Assembly, the Governing Board and the Management Board. A National Node Board gathers Node representatives. EBRAINS also has two Advisory Committees, the Science and Technology one and the Ethics and Society one which will soon be instated. EBRAINS is funded by the Horizon Europe Framework Programme.

A state-of-the-art ecosystem for neuroscience

EBRAINS is on a mission to revolutionise how neuroscience is conducted. The digital ecosystem that we provide enables advances in brain research that translate to innovations in neuroscience, healthcare and technology.

Towards a European Brain Partnership to accelerate scientific, technological, and societal needs.

EBRAINS’ ambition is to enable breakthroughs in different areas of brain science. We are proud to be part of several game-changing projects and initiatives, in which we join forces with leading institutions to achieve tangible results and outcomes. If you’re interested in working with us on specific projects, different possibilities exist. Don’t hesitate to contact us for more information.

EBRAINS is organised around a central hub that coordinates a pan-European network of services that are delivered through national nodes.

EU-CIP: European Knowledge Hub and Policy Testbed for Critical Infrastructure Protection
2022-10-01 08:00 - 2025-09-30 17:00
(PROJECT)

Engineering (ENG). “EU-CIP.” Accessed 13.08.2025. https://www.eucip.eu.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the grant agreement No 101073878.

The main goal of EU-CIP is to establish a novel pan European knowledge network for Resilient Infrastructures, which will enable policy makers to shape and produce data-driven evidence-based policies, while boosting the innovation capacity of Critical Infrastructures (CI) operators, authorities, and innovators (including SMEs).

In this direction, the partners have already established the European Cluster for Securing Critical infrastructures (ECSCI), which brings together 22 projects that collaborate in CI Resilience.

EU-CIP will leverage the capacity, organization, community, and achievements of the ECSCI cluster towards establishing an EU-wide knowledge network with advanced analytical and innovation support capabilities.

enRichMyData
2022-10-21 08:00 - 2025-09-30 17:00
(PROJECT)

enRichMyData. “enRichMyData.” Accessed 13.08.2025. https://enrichmydata.eu.

enRichMyData develops a novel paradigm for building rich, high-quality and valuable datasets to feed Big Data Analytics and AI applications. It has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101070284.

The enRichMyData project is coordinated by SINTEF (Norway), one of European’s largest independent research organisations. The project partners include companies such as Philips (The Netherlands) and Bosch (Germany), dedicated to engineering and manufacturing; Speed Network (Estonia), a provider of procurement data; JOT Internet Media (Spain), a digital marketing company; CS Group (Romania), a software service company; Expert AI (Italy), a technology company specializing in natural language understanding; and Ontotext (Bulgaria), a semantic technology company. They will have the full support of the research partners that, in addition to SINTEF, include the University of Milano Bicocca (Italy), Jozef Stefan Institute (Slovenia), University of Copenhagen (Denmark), GATE Institute (Bulgaria), and BGRIMM Technology Group (China).

enRichMyData delivers an open software toolbox – the enRichMyData toolbox – comprising practical, robust and scalable components to support organizations in enriching their data with reference data they may have limited knowledge of, as well as supporting data providers in making their data reusable and available in data enrichment processes.

The toolbox lowers the technological entry barriers by providing support for the definition of highly scalable and replicable data enrichment pipelines through a set of tools and infrastructure services related to capabilities needed during the lifecycle of enrichment pipelines. The toolbox makes the data enrichment process accessible to a broader set of stakeholders by reducing the required expertise and enhancing the tool support level.

Empower AI-driven business products and services

h-quality, rich and meaningful data are crucial to successfully implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data Analytics (BDA) solutions. Delivering required data to feed into AI and BDA models is costly, difficult, and often limited in data and skill availability. It is well known that up to 80% of the effort spent in AI and BDA projects is dedicated to ensuring data is fit for purpose. Activities are required to discover, understand, select, clean, transform, and integrate data from a variety of sources in such a way that data can be fed into the modelling phase. Such activities result in enriched data, eventually improving the quality of downstream BDA and AI applications. The data enrichment process is implemented by specifying, deploying, and executing data enrichment pipelines over data that can be structured, semi-structured and unstructured, in large amounts, and from static or streaming sources. While techniques exist to cover different enrichment operations such as data cleaning, linking, feature extraction, classification and semantic annotation, etc., the lack of comprehensive approaches and established tools dedicated to data enrichment makes the definition, implementation, and operation of enrichment pipelines difficult for too many organizations willing to improve their BDA and AI applications.

The overall vision of the enRichMyData project is to create a novel paradigm for building rich, high-quality, valuable, and FAIR-compliant datasets to feed downstream BDA and AI applications in the context of data-sharing ecosystems, such as data spaces. The paradigm facilitates the specification and execution of data enrichment pipelines, focusing on supporting various data enrichment operations. enRichMyData makes this easily accessible to a wide set of large and small organizations that encounter difficulties in delivering suitable data to feed their BDA and AI solutions due to the lack of usable tools/expertise for the cost-effective management of data enrichment pipelines.
