SANCUS

Methodology

The SANCUS project constitutes an ambitious Research and Innovation Action. As such, the main concept will be coordinated by a standard cycle‐based development procedure comprising of four definition‐development‐ integration‐validation stages, as illustrated in the figure bellow.

Illustration of the four-stage construction methodology of the proposed scheme

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.

Illustration of the high-level architectural logic and main components of the proposed scheme

The following Figure illustrates the interactions among the seven WPs of the project and their tasks. Project management (WP1) and the activities of impact creation, dissemination, and exploitation of results in WP7 run throughout the project and interact with all other activities. Moreover, market and techno‐economic analysis are provided as additional feedback from WP7 to the rest work packages.

The requirements and planning phase (WP2) provide the functional specifications and guidelines to the design and development of the various key components and engines (WP3, WP4, WP5) and it also prepares with elaborated scenarios the integration in WP6, initiating the demonstration of the SANCUS innovations. Additionally, WP3, WP4, and WP5 provide to the integration and demonstration phase that takes place in WP6 the technological advancements, adjustments and elaboration of the scenario.

Work package and task interactions

The Work package start and end dates, and their corresponding WP leaders, are presented in the Table below:

# Work package title Leader Start End
1
Project management
THALES
M01
M36
2
Use Cases, Requirements and Architecture
UBI
M01
M12
3
Validation and verification of firmware and open‐source platforms at code‐level
SECURA
M04
M33
4
Joint modelling and optimisation of cyber security, digital privacy and QoS reliability
ULANCS
M07
M33
5
Automated security validation and verification of 5G cloud‐native network platforms
NOKIA
M07
M33
6
System integration validation and demonstration
NCSRD
M19
M36
7
Dissemination, Communication and Exploitation of Results
EBOS
M01
M36