How to Protect Public Administration from Cybersecurity Threats: The COMPACT Project

The advent of the Internet has been opening new opportunities for Local Public Administrations (LPAs) to improve their efficiency while providing better services to citizens via an ever larger set of specialized network applications, including e-government, e-health, and more. Indeed, as a potential channel of accessing personal information, these specialized applications also expose the public sector to new risks. The cybersecurity landscape is changing, and Local Public Administrations are rapidly becoming an attractive target for cybercriminals, who might access some sets of personal data or gain control over smartly operated city resources through LPAs infrastructures. The consequences of cyber-threats have the potential to be considerable causing business interruptions, data losses, and thefts of intellectual property, significantly impacting both individuals and organizations. This paper provides an overview of the EU H2020 COMPACT (Competitive Methods to protect local Public Administration from Cyber security Threats) project, that aims to increase LPAs awareness, skills, and protection against cyber threats through risk assessment, game-based education, monitoring and knowledge sharing services that are highly usable, interoperable with major Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) solutions, cloud-enabled and cloud-ready.