While the current geopolitical situation and the wave of incidents disclosed in the past years (such as the Mirai botnet, Stuxnet and Blackenergy, among others) has helped promoting general awareness about the impact of cyber-attacks on a variety of digital assets, from online services to critical infrastructures, there is still a lot of work to be done. This situation is further aggravated by trends such as the increasing popularity of all kinds of connected, Internet-of-Things (IoT)- based devices, deployed almost everywhere, from household LANs to Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS).
This scenario constitutes a game-changer for protection frameworks and strategies, as infrastructure boundaries are pushed beyond the monolithic, self-hosted and stakeholder-centric model towards distributed and capillary service and device deployments involving several domains, such as cloud, telecommunications infrastructure and utility providers. Such systems need to be securely managed, monitored and configured, while preventing risks arising and from cyberattacks, intrusions and malware, compromising their operation or resulting in disasters.

Collaboration is key to bring together all the interested entities and individuals, such as researchers, telecommunications operators, utilities, security solution providers and even defense organizations, in order to better understand how to work together towards establishing an optimal defense framework. From this perspective, the ECCWS provides a privileged forum for technical exchange about the study, management, development and implementation of systems and concepts to combat cyber warfare or to improve information systems security. There are several strong strands of research and interest that are developing in the area including the understanding of threats and risks to information systems, the development of a strong security culture, as well as incident detection and post incident investigation.