The 13th edition of the International Conference on Critical Information Infrastructures Security (CRITIS) took place in Kaunas, Lithuania’s second-largest city. The event was organised by the Lithuanian Energy Institute (LEI) and hosted by the Vytautas Magnus University.
Following the successful organisation of CRITIS 2016 in Paris at UIC HQ and the support given to CRITIS 2017 (Lucca, Italy), UIC ensured continuity with the previous editions by supporting the scientific programme of CRITIS 2018 and promoting the railway sector among the international Critical Infrastructure protection research community.
The conference brought together around 70 participants from various European countries, as well as Japan, South Korea and the USA. Participants included representatives of national governments, EU policy makers, scientists, academics, law enforcement agencies, CI operators and service providers.
The programme included five technical sessions with presentations of scientific works, a poster session, a project dissemination session, two invitational sessions and four keynote lectures. As in previous years, special attention was devoted to young talent. To this purpose, the best contribution presented by a young author received the Young CRITIS Award.
The conference covered essential topics in the field of security and resilience, such as critical energy systems, urban resilience, securing the Internet of Things, needs and toolsets for industrial control systems security, governance and resilience of CI, and policy issues.
UIC was represented by Grigore Havârneanu (Research Advisor, Security Division) who was invited to chair one session and also disseminated two UIC research projects that have achieved important milestones this month: Project CYRAIL (CYber security in the RAILway sector – www.cyrail.eu), which held its final conference two weeks ago; and Project SAFER-LC (SAFER Level Crossing by integrating and optimising road-rail infrastructure management and design – www.safer-lc.eu), which will hold its mid-term conference on 10 October in Madrid.
The next CRITIS edition will be organised in Linköping, Sweden from 23 to 25 September, 2019 and will continue to foster cooperation between CI sectors, academia and authorities. The call for papers will be available soon.