While we had the the Icelandic National Coordination Centre (NCC-IS) for Cybersecurity established already in 2022, it got now even stronger by benefiting since October 2023 from a two year co-funding via the Digital Europe Programme. We even gave it an Icelandic name: Eyvör – National Cybersecurity Coordination Centre of Iceland. Eyvör NCC-IS will raise awareness and foster education in Iceland in the field of cybersecurity.

For more info, see also my research page on Eyvör NCC-IS.

Another project has started in November 2023 with three year co-funding via the Digital Europe Programme: ICEDEF – Defend Iceland. The ICEDEF project involves the creation of a national vulnerability reporting web portal and associated services for paying bounties to ethical hackers for discovering these vulnerabilities. (Our research shows that vulnerability reporting needs to be improved in Iceland.) The Icelandic Defend Iceland web page gives an idea how that could look like (do not get confused by that fact that on some screenshots depicted on that web page, still the old working title Hack Iceland is used).

Once vulnerabilities are reported there are challenges in effectively integrating (and verifying the effectiveness) of the fixes into the software development life cycle and University of Iceland will take care of this together and educate stakeholders about secure development practices and software vulnerabilities, e.g. via security events such as hackathons and workshops.

For more info, see also my research page on ICEDEF.

Vacancy: We are hiring a postdoc for ICEDEF: please contact me or our new cybersecurity professor Tom Welsh.