CYBER

Aviation resilience – cybersecurity threat landscape
Call for Tender
Horizon Europe
EASA participation
Contract and technical management
Research Domain
Safety

Action

The European Commission published the amended Horizon Europe Work Programme 2023-24 on 31 March 2023. The overall driver of Cluster 5 – “Climate, Energy and Mobility” is to accelerate the green and digital transition, and the associated transformation of the economy, industry and society to achieve climate neutrality in Europe by 2050.

This cluster contains seven research actions, which have been delegated to EASA as contracting authority. This project addresses the following action: Aviation resilience – cybersecurity threat landscape.

Outcome and output

The outcome below describes the expected and targeted benefit and impact the project will generate after successfully completion. The output below describes the intended project results needed to achieve the expected/targeted outcome. 

Expected outcome

The objective is to identify cybersecurity threats having potential negative impact on the safety of flight operations.
The scope should consider connected systems (airborne and ground) dependant on external digital signals 

  •  for Position Navigation and Time (PNT) services,
  •  for digital communication,
  •  for flight control,
  •  for system management (installation, update, maintenance, decommission)

The scope should consider generic functional architectures for aircraft, ground, and space systems: the aim is to identify systemic vulnerabilities and not vulnerabilities or a specific system.

Required output
  • Identification of critical assets
  • A list of cybersecurity threat scenarios with a potential harmful impact on aviation safety 
  • Risk assessment
  • Summary of threat impacts and its potential harmful impacts to safety that should be considered by authorities and organisations by order of priority
  • When available, preventive and mitigative barriers, either by security or safety measures, including operational ones, that would ensure resilience to the identified threats. This may imply proposal for new research objectives.

Call for tender

Check the call for tender for this Research Project

Contract duration: 24 months

Important notice:
The call for tender will be issued ahead of the conclusion of the Contribution Agreement between the European Union, represented by the European Commission, and EASA. The conclusion of the aforementioned Contribution Agreement is a prerequisite for the award of any contract resulting from this tender procedure.