SOCCER Project Marks 24-Month Milestone with Launch of Advanced Security Hub Testing and Enhanced Threat Intelligence Platform
The SOCCER (Security Operation Centres Capacity building for European Resilience) project, a key European initiative co-funded by the European Union, today announced it has reached its 24-month milestone, entering a critical new phase of validation for its innovative cyber security software, the Security Hub. This marks a significant step forward in the project's mission to strengthen Europe's cyber defence capabilities.
The Security Hub, a suite of cutting-edge tools developed by project partner Trout Software, is now undergoing rigorous real-world testing across the project’s three core Security Operation Centres (SOCs). Expert teams at Signal Iduna (SI) in Germany, Orange Romania (ORO), and the newly established SOC in SZTAKI in Hungary will validate the software's diverse packages and functionalities within their operational environments. This collaborative testing phase is essential to ensure the software is robust, effective, and ready for wider deployment to counter emerging cyber threats.
A pivotal achievement in this period is the successful establishment of a new, federated SOC by the Institute for Computer Science and Control (SZTAKI) in Hungary. As detailed in their comprehensive "SOC Establishment Report," this new centre, named the Kinin SOC, will serve the Hungarian Research Network (HUN-REN), providing a blueprint for building sovereign, extensible, and collaborative national cyber defence capabilities. The federated Kinin SOC, alongside the established SOCs at SI and ORO, forms the backbone of the SOCCER project's ecosystem.
At the heart of this ecosystem is the SOCCER Threat Intelligence Sharing (TIS) Platform. This platform is designed to unite a powerful network of intelligence sources into one secure repository, enabling partners to share and correlate threat intelligence signals—from behavioural insights to detailed attack kill chains.
In the coming year, the SOCCER project will focus on two key parallel tracks. The first is to leverage the invaluable feedback from the three SOC end-users to further refine and enhance the Security Hub software. Simultaneously, the project will move from concept to practice with the Threat Intelligence Sharing (TIS) Platform, as the partners begin the active, manual submission and consumption of threat intelligence data. This crucial step will run in parallel with the continued development and enhancement of each individual SOC, strengthening their unique capabilities while fostering a collaborative defence posture.
About SOCCER:
The SOCCER project, co-funded by the European Union's DIGITAL Europe Programme, brings together a consortium of cyber and technology experts from Germany, France, Hungary, and Romania. The project aims to develop and implement cutting-edge technologies for secure data access and threat intelligence sharing, interconnecting advanced Security Operation Centres to enhance cyber security resilience at both the national and EU levels.
Contact:
Ernő Rigó
WP Leader, SOCCER
rigo.erno@sztaki.hun-ren.hu
https://soccer-project.eu