ENFORCERS: Enhanced Cooperation for Cybersecurity

Motivation

Digitalization and connectivity are transforming automation and manufacturing, but they also expose production systems to new and evolving cyber threats. Vulnerable or outdated automation applications running in Operational Technology (OT) environments can become an entry point for attackers, potentially disrupting critical processes and causing significant economic damage.

To reduce this risk, software components must be updated and redistributed securely, even when they traverse untrusted or partially known networks on their way to field devices and gateways in OT infrastructures. At the same time, companies need an effective way to detect cybersecurity incidents early, coordinate the response across multiple stakeholders, and restore secure operations quickly.

ENFORCERS addresses these needs by strengthening the robustness of software distribution and data exchange across heterogeneous network infrastructures and cloud environments, ensuring that automation systems remain trustworthy throughout their lifecycle and meet the highest security standards.

Project Objectives

The project aims to design and implement a cybersecurity system platform that closes the loop between incident detection, coordinated response, and secure software updates in industrial environments.

At its core, the platform integrates an incident management solution that can rapidly identify cybersecurity incidents, trigger notifications to trusted instances in a securely chained “system circle”, and orchestrate automated workflows to mitigate vulnerabilities.

One central objective is to enable a private Security Operation Center (SOC) that collects, correlates, and disseminates vulnerability and threat data, and that can cooperate with other SOCs across borders and industries to improve collective cyber resilience.

Small AI models deployed at OT edge gateways provide continuous threat monitoring and improved classification of vulnerabilities directly at the endpoints, enhancing the quality of the information available to the SOC.

A further key objective is to establish Digital Elements that are anchored in Secure Elements (SE), particularly at OT edges where trust boundaries change and where secure, online software updates are critical for vulnerability mitigation. These Digital Elements serve as trusted anchor points for deploying and controlling software from the cloud, and the project includes dedicated activities to raise awareness among manufacturers on how to integrate such elements into secure product designs.

The Role of Wibu-Systems

Wibu Systems is coordinating this project and contributes its long standing expertise in secure licensing, code protection, and secure element technology to the project. Building on its extensive experience in protecting industrial software and enabling trusted update mechanisms, Wibu Systems helps define and implement the concept of Digital Elements based on Secure Elements for OT devices and gateways.

Within the Cybersec System circle, Wibu Systems focuses on mechanisms that ensure the authenticity, integrity, and controlled execution of software updates distributed from cloud environments into OT infrastructures. This includes designing secure distribution flows, supporting the integration of security policies into automated workflows, and enabling fine grained control over which software can run on which device and under which conditions.

In addition, Wibu Systems supports the project partners and manufacturers by contributing to best practices and guidelines on secure product design, highlighting how digital elements and secure software distribution can be embedded into existing automation architectures. Through these activities, Wibu Systems helps create a practical and scalable foundation for trustworthy software lifecycle management in modern industrial environments.