On 11 May, SDN-microSENSE project members gathered at SINTEF Energy Research in Trondheim to test Use Case 1: Investigation of Cyberattack Scenarios and Methodologies Against EPES. We took the opportunity to talk to Project Coordinator Alfredo González Naranjo (Ayesa) and Sokratis Katsikas (the Norwegian University of Science and Technology – NTNU) about the aims of the use case, the value of European collaboration, and the importance of cybersecurity for electrical power and energy systems (EPES) in an increasingly digital society.
This is the third and final part of this blog post.
Broad expertise for flexible solutions
At its core, SDN-microSENSE is a European collaboration, with 33 partners from 15 countries and funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The value of such a large European collaboration is twofold. First, it gives the project access to an extremely broad range of expertise.
“This project involves a high number of tools,” says Alfredo. “Each partner provides one or two different tools, and is specialised in a form of technology or a field of knowledge.”
“You cannot expect to find this kind of expertise and knowhow in a single partner, or even among two or three partners, and certainly not in a single country,” Sokratis agrees.
Second, the solutions developed by this project are applicable to numerous countries, rather than just one.
“The added value of having partners with different expertise and knowhow, and who come from different European countries, is that whatever we come up with is potentially usable and exploitable in any of these countries, not just one,” says Sokratis.
“Because regulations are different, technical environments are different, it’s important to ensure that the solutions are applicable to many countries in Europe,” Alfredo adds.
Beyond the advantages it brings to the project, both Alfredo and Sokratis find a lot of personal value in participating in these types of collaborative projects.
“From my personal point of view, I enjoy collaborating with people from different countries, cultures and time zones with different legislation, different languages. It’s interesting,” says Alfredo.
“I would fully support what Alfredo said. I would just add that I also like being able to see the relevance of the research we are doing in the real world through collaborating with industry. Of course we do that in our nationally funded projects as well, but doing it on a European basis is even better,” Sokratis concludes.
Text by: Jessica Scott (SINTEF Energy Research)
Photos by: Sondre Aksnes Yggeseth (SINTEF Energy Research)
This blog post is also published in the website of SINTEF