The increased use of digitization and connected systems supporting many industrial fields brings with it a progressive rise of cyberthreats. Given the intrinsic risks associated with connected technology under the cyber profile, LINKS Foundation is developing a technical-methodological approach to attack protection and risk mitigation. The goal of research activities is to identify and analyse threats and vulnerabilities in current systems in order to plan appropriate and efficient defence solutions. The challenge is planning such solutions so that they answer ever more sophisticated cyberattacks that hit the whole system, support infrastructures such as communication networks and satellite systems included. More specifically the Cybersecurity Team performs research activities in five technical-scientific domains:

• Digital identity for connected objects according to the Self-Sovereign Identity paradigm, targeting the development of a software and/or hardware digital identity that enables new authentication, authorisation and secure communication mechanisms for connected objects.
• Trusted Computing for the development of integrity architectures for cryptographic verification of software integrity during bootstrap and runtime through remote attestation protocols. The goal here is to enhance the Trust level between objects in a connected system and go from the secure communications paradigm to the trusted communications one.
• Zero-Knowledge Proof protocols for the development of an authorisation framework based on Anonymous Credentials and Selective Disclosure Credentials with the goal of safeguarding object privacy in a connected system and reducing the exposure of the system to eavesdropping of critical information attacks.
• Secure Messaging Protocols based on secure data transfer on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) such as the IOTA Tangle. The objective is to actualize a true Digital Trust of information exchanged between objects in a connected system distributed on a large geographical scale.
• Convergence of satellite navigation technology and telecommunication network security techniques for the protection of Critical infrastructures with the goal of implementing Trust mechanisms on time and location information used for operation management.