News Brief #10: Ensuring the sustainability of the FORESIGHT results through successful exploitation

As attacks on critical infrastructure in sectors such as naval, maritime, and energy have been rapidly growing in the recent past, the need for improved preparedness has become higher and higher. Especially in the cyber-sphere, where attacks have not only become more in number, but are also steadily getting more complex and stronger, efficient cybersecurity training is of utmost importance. Due to a lack of resources, however, a high number of relevant people is not adequately prepared for cybersecurity threats and, therefore, companies present lacks in several areas that are important for the prevention of and response to such attacks.

To this end, the FORESIGHT project developed a platform providing training opportunities for people working in critical infrastructure environments such as the sectors mentioned above. Thereby, the project follows the overall aim of increasing preparedness of organisations for cyber-attacks.

As the project is now coming to an end, a focus has to be put on the exploitation of the developed results in order to ensure their sustainable use and uptake. In this area, there are a variety of aspects that need to be discussed within the consortium in order to form common decisions. These areas include the following:

• Individual exploitation plans: Here, partners had to specify which results they want to exploit, which market sectors they plan to target, which channels they plan to use and what their expected sales are. Furthermore, they reported exploitation goals they had already achieved.
• Exploitable results prioritisation: Each partner selected the most promising project outcomes and prioritised the results. Furthermore, they provided a rating regarding innovation, exploitability and impact on industry.
• Exploitation routes: Exploitation routes include commercial exploitation, education exploitation, scientific exploitation, and exploitation by/through networks, associations and policy groups. For each result, partners selected the most promising route in order to build a base for later-developed business plans.
• IPR management: In order to protect project results and define rights and privileges beyond the duration of the project, partners were asked to define their contribution to specific results, what they consider most useful for protection as well as their interest in claiming the rights for a specific result.
• Value proposition: This included questions on areas such as customer profile and value map.

Based on the outcomes of the discussions in these areas, the FORESIGHT consortium was able to prioritise the project’s results and evaluate exploitation routes. Furthermore, business plans for specific results were created, wherever needed. Additionally, based on the questions on IPR management, an IPR matrix was created, displaying an overview of the partners’ contributions to each result and who claims its rights for what purpose. Thereby, the consortium was able to find common solutions on all above-mentioned issues.