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

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.

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.

FAME: Federated decentralized trusted dAta Marketplace for Embedded finance
2023-01-01 08:00 - 2025-12-31 17:00
(PROJECT)

FAME. “FAME.” Accessed 13.08.2025. https://www.fame-horizon.eu.

FAME is a joint effort of world-class experts in data management, data technologies, the data economy, and digital finance, aiming to develop and launch to the global market a unique, trustworthy, energy-efficient, and secure federated data marketplace for Embedded Finance (EmFi).

​The FAME project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2023 Research and Innovation Programe under grant agreement nª 101092639. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Horizon Europe. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Marketplace

The FAME Federated Data Marketplace for Embedded Finance is a Data Space, according to the definition of the EU, customized for buying and selling federated data assets in the financial sector.

Accessible through a unified entry point, the Marketplace allows for secure data access, sharing, trading and analysis through FAME’s analytical tools for both finance and non-finance organizations, tech and non-tech users, and other end-users.

Why FAME?

Modern data marketplaces are transforming how data assets are shared, traded, and utilized. Recent European initiatives have made significant strides, particularly in enhancing data monetization, regulatory compliance, and secure data exchange. However, existing centralized marketplaces face challenges that limit broader participation and accessibility. Notable limitations include complex data discovery processes, limited transparency in value-based data monetization, and insufficient integration of trusted, energy-efficient analytics. Addressing these gaps can unlock new data-driven applications in sectors like finance, retail, and smart cities, empowering innovative services that seamlessly integrate financial data. That is where FAME comes in.

MinDID: Desentralised Identity (DID) and consent management for secure data exchange
2023-10-01 08:00 - 2024-10-31 17:00
(PROJECT)

MinDID was a research project in 2024 managed by VentureNet AS in collaboration with the Norwegian Computing Centre (NR), which received co-financing from the Research Council of Norway and Innlandet County through the FORREGION program.

MinDID succeeded in developing an reference architecture for a cutting-edge decentralized identity and consent management (MinDID) component for VentureNet’s data exchange platform to enable interoperability between decentralized identity and consent management solutions, such as self-sovereign identity wallets.

According to an OECD report, a well-known barrier to data exchange is “a proliferation of standards, and a lack of common standards”. A key research question in the project was how to develop an open, independent and interoperable solution for decentralized identity and consent management (MinDID), which will be able to integrate with several commercial solutions for digital identity and consent management.

The MinDID component aims to give data owners the ability to choose which applications they want to use for managing their identity, consent and data storage, in addition to easily switching between different solutions without having to lose control and overview of their data and settings for data exchange. MinDID can also enable third-party platforms to maintain customer relationships and data exchange agreements even if customers switch vendors for digital identity and consent.

NR assisted in a mapping of relevant data exchange standards and technologies to ensure that the development framework for MinDID is in line with relevant EU initiatives, and contribute to increasing scalability and interoperability of VentureNet’s data exchange system.

NR has cutting-edge expertise in digital identity, access management, encryption and security in digital marketplaces that are being developed in the EU, and which is highly relevant to the VentureNet consortium’s future research project plans. NR participates in several relevant EU projects, such as the Horizon project “FAME” that aims to develop a decentralized digital marketplace for “secure, interoperable and regulatory compliant data exchange in line with European initiatives such as GAIA-X”.

Want to learn more?

Contact VentureNet to learn more about research results and collaboration opportunities.

INN-the-Loop: Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
2024-01-12 08:00 - 2025-03-30 17:00
(PROJECT)

INN-the-Loop was a research project in 2024 managed by the University of Inland Norway (INN) with contributions from the Norwegian Computing Center (NR), SINTEF, NTNU SFI NORCICS (Norwegian Center for Cybersecurity in Critical Sectors), and VentureNet AS. The project was co-financed by the Research Council of Norway and Innlandet County through the Regional Research Fund (RFF) program.

The INN-the-Loop project analysed limitations and risks related to ML, GenAI and Agentic AI. It identified significant risks and barriers to widespread adoption of AI in healthcare and other critical sectors that demand high standards of accuracy, safety, security, and privacy.

The project builds on results from a research project in 2023 with several leading Norwegian research institutions and VentureNet AS, a Norwegian technology company specialising in data exchange automation. A key result from the 2023 project was a framework for Human-Guided Artificial Intelligence and Data Exchange (Human-GAIDE).

Human-GAIDE was developed to address widespread challenges with data accuracy in AI models. AI and machine learning (ML) models are vulnerable to missing data, erroneous data, manipulation of data and systems, and AI bias, all of which can impact the accuracy of an AI-model. Error and cyber vulnerabilities can compromise the safety of AI-enabled systems and lead to undesirable outcomes, such as proliferation of manipulated and distorted information or medical device failure.

The project developed a highly scalable methodology to design trustworthy AI-systems with dynamic HITL models for smart healthcare. This is applicable to several critical sectors with high requirements for safety, security and resilience.

Nordic Digital Innovation Ecosystem
2024-05-22 08:00 - 2026-12-01 17:00
(PROJECT)

The Nordic Digital Innovation Ecosystem (NDIE) is an ongoing business network development initiative to support development of trustworthy systems and infra- structure in critical sectors by connecting public and private sectors and research institutions and supporting project establishment.

The project was initiated in 2024 and managed by Klosser Innovasjon AS and VentureNet AS in collaboration with the Norwegian Computing Center (NR), the Norwegian Center for Cybersecurity in Critical Sectors (SFI NORCICS), the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE), and Smart Innovation Norway, with financial support from Innlandet County in Norway.

Within 5 months of the project’s start, NDIE organised and executed 9 successful international events, including some of Norway’s first seminars and webinars on European Data Spaces and a trailblazing 2-day Nordic Matchmaking Event at DNV Headquarters and NR Headquarters in Oslo.

Some of the speakers included representatives from the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency, Sykehuspartner, Det Norske Veritas, DNV-Nixu, FICEC, F-Secure, Defendable, Business Finland, the City of Wien in Austria, Gaia-X, and FIWARE.

Visit the digital platform and video clips on VentureNets Online Marketplace and on Youtube.
