The 7SHIELD project addresses the security and the resilience of EU Ground Segments of Space Systems, meeting the crosscutting and the sectorial criteria of the EU critical infrastructures (2008/14). The Copernicus era has created a new market with the massive amounts of satellite data that the ground segments of space systems receive serve to the market and governmental bodies. A physical/cyber-attack to their installations or communication networks, respectively, would cause debilitating impact on public safety and security of EU citizens and public authorities. A physical attack on a space ground segment makes the distribution of satellite data problematic and, on the other hand, a cyber-attack in its data storage, access and exchange affects not only the reliability of space data, but also their FAIR standards: findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability. Current approaches do not fully exploit the recent advances in surveillance mechanisms with robotic technologies and AI.

7SHIELD aims to confront complex threats by covering all the macrostages of crisis management, namely pre-crisis, crisis and post-crises phases. Specifically, the early warning mechanism estimates the level of risk before the occurrence of a cyber or physical attack. During an attack, the detection and response are effective and efficient, taking into account budgetary constraints. A mitigation plan is designed and automatically updated to offer a quick recovery after an intentional attack or a system failure. Security and resilience of private installations of space ground segments are also supported by business continuity scenarios, building on top of an innovative orchestration of novel monitoring and forecasting technologies. The framework will integrate advanced technologies for data integration, processing, and analytics, machine learning and recommendation systems, data visualization and dashboards, data security and cyber threat protection. The technological solution is co-designed with infrastructure owners and operators of ground segments of space systems and contributes to policy making, standardisation and new guidelines for contingency planning and service continuity. The project will be evaluated and demonstrated in five installations of ground segments of space systems.

CERTH is responsible for the management of scientific and technical aspects of the 7SHIELD project and has a critical role in the project by leading a WP for the detection cyber-physical attacks and tasks including those to respond in emergency situations. The developed solutions cover computer vision analysis, ontological modeling and crisis classification for risk assessment in ground segments of space systems.