Executive Summary

The acronym FIRE is an abbreviation of “Facilitate Industry and Research in Europe”. The objective of FIRE is to improve the European industrial competitiveness in markets of trustworthy ICT, by taking account of the needs of the Security industry in this domain building on the unique combination of the participating international clusters in information security technologies.

FIRE aims to reduce the gap between industry and research in Europe, organize activities that reduce the fragmentation in the information security industry itself, and support in coordinating the European Trustworthy ICT research by linking researchers with the needs of the industry and finally raising the European industrial competitiveness in the markets of trustworthy ICT.

For IT Industrial and Commercial organisations, FIRE intends to offer:

• Involvement of key organisations who wish to participate in shaping the European and National Trustworthy ICT research agenda to help shape it best address their needs.  The EU has an annual budget for ICT research.  In 2013 it will be committing €36.5M specifically to Trustworthy ICT and a further €308.5 to the wider Pervasive and Trusted Network and Service Infrastructure topic.  The European Commission has a strong desire to see increased benefit to their industrial and commercial organisations and the efficiency and security of e-government services and critical infrastructures.  Organisations invited to participate in FIRE are drawn from the following sectors:
  • Energy
  • Finance
  • Government
  • Health
  • Mobile Communications (inc. GPS).
• Access to an online repository reporting on the European research centres, their researchers and the current research topics on which they are engaged.  This will be generated by the research community and the FIRE Partners.
• Access to a platform to seek-out potential collaborators, both individuals and research organisations, who have the ability to contribute solutions to specific problems.
• Insights, on a pan-European basis, into emerging areas that researchers identify as representing tomorrow’s business opportunities and threats.
• Influencing European security research from a market perspective, offering and contributing insights in market needs and developments that can be connected to research activities.
• Insights from pan-Cluster (trans-national) working groups in areas of common strategic importance starting from existing cluster working groups covering (cyber security, cloud, identity management, standardization, …)
• Insights from themed (Energy, Finance, etc.) brokerage workshops to spur and demonstrate pull-through and implement best practices in strategically important areas.
• Participation in the end-user advisory board which will directly interact with the research community and influence longer term objectives that will be considered for future central funding and as an input to regional policy.
• Access to the research working group, comprising leading researchers and research organisations drawn from the Member States.  Current leading research topics include:
  • Cyber Security
  • Trust in the Future Internet
  • E-Identity
  • Privacy & Protection
  • Accountability & Governance
  • Socio-Economics and Trust Engineering.