The first definition stage marks the beginning of the project and involves the identification of the technical requirements, GDPR and SELP aspects that will drive the design and development of the SANCUS scheme and its components, as explained in Objective #1. The second development stage takes off from the identified requirements, and comprises a range of integrated, multidisciplinary research and technology tasks to design and develop the proposed engines, models, mechanisms and tools, as reported under Objective #2 to Objective #7, i.e., FiV, CiV SiD, AcE, MiU and GiO engines.

With the successful completion of all tasks in second stage, the third integration stage fuses the stand‐alone SANCUS engines, mechanisms and tools within an operational network testbed prototype that includes all the aforementioned 5G Core virtualisation technologies, i.e., SDN, NFV, MEC, CCN and NRS, and latest 5G RAN physical infrastructure, as discussed in Objective #8. The network prototype will be then evaluated and demonstrated in real‐world environment to confirm the proper operation and co‐operation of the newly developed scheme’s components.

In the fourth validation stage, the SANCUS scheme and network prototype will be validated under three large‐scale pilot use cases covering different attack scenarios to showcase the proof of concept of the joint security, privacy and reliability performance gains, which covers Objective #9.