EU-HYBNET 4th Annual Workshop #AW2024

We are pleased to announce that the EU-HYBNET consortium will hold its fourth Annual Workshop, #AW, on 24 April 2024 at the Valencia Local Police Headquarters in Valencia, Spain. Please save the date in your calendars and share the event with your networks!

This workshop will present the results and findings of the EU-HYBNET project during the past year. The consortium aims to ensure vivid interaction with all hybrid threats stakeholders to assess the feasibility of the project findings and possible recommendations to innovations uptake and standardisation.

As part of the event, EU-HYBNET will also be inviting providers of innovative solutions on security-related topics to present research and/or innovations which could contribute to countering hybrid threats. Please find the call for pitches further below.

The workshop will be open to project partners, network members and external participants upon registration. Please find the event agenda here, which will be updated regularly.

Call for Pitches/Innovations

As part of the 4^th Annual Workshop, EU-HYBNET is inviting organizations and projects that work with security-related topics to present innovations (technological and non-technological e.g. SOPs, training) which contribute to countering hybrid threats in following areas: 

* Future trends in hybrid threats: detection of the weak signals and vulnerabilities to improve foresight capability in the areas of:

• Political deficiency (Political volatility – structural threat / Lack of policy foresight)
• New agit-prop (Disinformation spread through encrypted and multiple private messaging apps / Anti-system movements)
• Substitutive reality (Conspiracy theories spread to European realities / Alternativisation of reality)

* Cyber and Future Technologies: monitor and analyse attempts to manipulate civil societies in digital environment (combat information manipulation) such as:

• Stealing data attacking individuals (Theft of work or employee data in politically exposed institution / Doxxing civil society organization (CSO) activists / Leak of hospital patient data / Social engineering (impersonation, taming with billing systems and obligations))
• Online manipulation attacking democracy (AI generated content – structural threat / Content moderation weaponization / Artificial amplification (CIB)
• Attack on services (Denial-of-service/DDOS / Physical attack on infrastructures critical to population livelihood (cyber-physical))

* Resilient civilians, local level and national administration: increase trust among government and people e.g.

• Spreading violence (Increasing tolerance for violence as a mode of political dissent– structural threat / Online political harassment and “SLAPP”)
• Attack on social structures (Vulnerability of higher education institutions to interference / Collapse of the hospital system under massive patient afflux)
• Undermining institutions’ internal organisation (Personnel tensions in critical areas – structural threat / Obsolete hierarchies in national security agency)

* Information and strategic communication, incl. foreign information manipulation and interference, e.g.

• Media conundrum (Difficult sustainability of quality journalistic media)
• Victimization narratives in the informational space (Generalization of narratives based on victimized identities)
• Attack on information (Pressures onto independent fact checkers / Increased use of visual misinformation)

Innovations related to hybrid threats but not linked to the topics abovementioned can be submitted. For the technological solutions we encourage you to submit your application only if your solution has a TRL >7.  If you are interested in presenting your innovation in-person during the Annual Workshop, please fill out the template which you can download below. Kindly send your description of an innovation by the 29th of February 2024 to Laurea University of Applied Sciences (LAUREA), EU-HYBNET Project Manager Ms. Tiina Haapanen tiina.haapanen@laurea.fi

Once we have received all inputs, EU-HYBNET will select 3-4 most promising innovation to be presented during the workshop on 24/4/2024 in Valencia, Spain (venue: Valencia Local Police Head Quarters). Travel cost of presenters will be covered by the project to reasonable extend.