The CyberELITE (The cyber security laboratory):

project focuses on business opportunities created by digitalization for the manufacturing industry and the cyber security threats that jeopardize product safety. The starting points for the project are the EU-level preparation of cyber security regulations to improve and ensure cyber security and cyber reliability of SMEs, and the cyber security testing needs expressed by companies.

The project will develop regional innovation platforms, which include the operations of IoT cyber security laboratories as well as their processes and connections to external players. The innovation platforms focus on the manufacturing industry and the security of IoT hardware as a part of the service provision. The objective is to create an ecosystem that is capable of supporting IoT business development in the SME sector, in particular. A cyber security testing and learning environment is being developed on the Salo IoT campus in Southwest Finland. The goal is to develop the environment to a level at which certification would be possible.

A tangible outcome of the project will be an innovation platform (in other words, a cyber security laboratory and the service model linked to it) which will enable companies in the Southwest Finland and Kymenlaakso regions to ensure compliance with the new EU regulation as early as the product development process. The new regulation will enable the EU to offer the SME sector a standardized way to demonstrate the cyber security level of their products.

The innovation platform for assessing cyber security to be introduced in the project will support companies in designing, creating and evaluating indicators and assessment methods that measure and verify cyber security intended for the use of these and other such IoT organizations, with the aim of establishing a systematic process that is verifiable and, if needed, can be audited.