Seamless and Secure Connectivity Program

Develops an end-to-end seamless and secure connectivity and communication of the future.

Earth with a digital network overlay, representing global connectivity and secure communications.

Program Summary

Seamless and Secure Connectivity program aims at enabling trustworthy, secure, and resilient end-to-end connectivity architectures and products including life-cycle services in various domains. Business Finland has granted the program EUR 10 million development funding and, in addition, EUR 20 million funding for the ecosystem companies and research partners. The four-year program led by Bittium will last until 2026. Achieving the goal requires active co-operation with various public and private contributors, including e.g. network, application, terminal and other devices providers combined with the various software and technology solution providers.

Focus Themes

Person interacting with a touchscreen, with security icons like a lock, smartphone, and wireless symbol overlay.

Secure Encryption Technologies

The objective is to define and create roadmap to develop and apply future encryption technologies.

City skyline at night with digital network connections visualized across buildings, representing smart city communication.

Seamless and Secure Connectivity for Highly Secure Communications in the Future Networks

The objective is to define ad solve special questions related to highly secure applications as well as application of related technologies and solutions.

Person using a smartphone and laptop with digital network connections overlay.

Secure End-to-End Verticals

The objective is to develop end-to-end information security, including the development of information security in different verticals.

Healthcare professional interacting with a digital interface, with icons representing medical data and networks.

Scaled Sensor Fusion Development

As objective to define and create roadmap for the utilization of information from several sensors and thus sensor fusion based on, for example, medical measurement data.

Computer monitor displaying patient data on Bittium software interface in a medical office.

Significant Development of Operating Models (e.g. RegOps, a Method of Agile Development of Medical Software)

The objective is to develop different operating models in such a way that they take into account the extensive requirements of regulations and directives, and the rapid adaptation or application of regulations and directives to software supporting devices or services.

A woman walking in a busy city street with sunlight shining in the background.

Shifts from Devices into End-to-End Solutions and Services

As objective to develop technologies and solutions that enable the transfer of information from devices to solutions and services (end-to-end connections), for example in medical remote diagnostics.

Bittium 5g connectivity

Bittium Veturi & SW4E Collaboration Workshop

Join the Bittium Veturi & SW4E Collaboration Workshop in Tampere!

Explore the future of RegOps, AI, and software engineering at this free collaborative workshop hosted by Bittium Veturi and the SW4E ecosystem. The event will feature expert presentations and hands-on workshops designed for anyone interested in these cutting-edge topics.

Date: 6.11

Seamless and Secure Connectivity Ecosystem Event

Bittium’s Seamless and Secure Connectivity Ecosystem Event with presentations from Bittium, BusinessFinland, VTT, JYU and University of Oulu, was held in Oulu on March 20.

Program Ecosystem

The ecosystem of the Seamless and Secure Connectivity Program will develop seamless digital structures, infrastructure, systems, and processes as well as cyber resilience suitable for the current, advanced 5th generation (5G advanced) and future 6G environments. In order to reach this goal, the perspective of overall development, from devices to services in the entire chain, must be taken into account.

Program Management

Jari Partanen
Veturi Program Lead

Jari Jauhiainen
Research Collaboration

PhotonWear (Wearable Technologies for Photonic Sensors)

Demographic change and the need for cost-effective solutions for health and elderly care is one of the biggest global challenges. Wearable sensors are fundamental to monitoring of health and wellness for their inherent advantages: non-invasive measurements, continuous data collection and wireless connectivity. PHOTONWEAR will rely on novel optical sensing methods for physiological parameters, advanced data analytics, and manufacturing and integration methods for conformable electronics. Project will focus on optical non-invasive measurement of different physiological parameters and biomarkers, using ultra-comfortable sensors for healthcare and wellness applications, such as patient monitoring, apnea detection, heart health and metabolic monitoring. PHOTONWEAR aims are:

  • Digital twin of the human – optical model of human tissue by simulation toolset and with the help of using realistic physical models of human skin and body parts
  • High-accuracy optical measurements – research tools and methodologies for medical quality optical measurements by a robust multispectral system capable for acquiring data with easily reconfigurable settings.
  • Demonstrators validated with a volunteer group – ultra-comfortable, flexible/stretchable skin patch optical sensor providing medical quality performance for heart rate and blood oxygenation measurements, including photodiode technology with 20% higher sensitivity than with state-of-the-art technologies and also capability to measure non-invasive blood pressure.
  • Novel optical measurement of lactate and glucose levels – radical and innovative idea for proof-of-concept non-invasive measurement of lactate and glucose levels directly from human tissue.

PHOTONWEAR is composed of industrial leaders in Finland in both healthcare and in wellness, as well as in novel photonics technologies. Academic partners will help in bringing novel, beyond state-of-the-art technologies and innovations into use of Finnish wearable technologies ecosystem.

PHOTONWEAR aims to combine international networking with close national collaboration in order to develop new wearable technologies for photonic analyzers as well as value chains that lead to new scientific know-how, significant industrial business and new jobs in Finland.

PHOTONWEAR project partners are GE Healthcare, OURA, Elfys, University of Oulu and VTT (coordinator).

Contact for the PHOTONWEAR project is [email protected].

CISSAN (Collective intelligence supported by security aware nodes)

CISSAN builds methods and technology for integrating collective security intelligence to IoT networks. CISSAN-powered networks will be able to collaboratively identify tampered and adversarial devices, detect malicious activities, and select effective countermeasures. Higher IoT network resilience with be accompanied by resource efficiency through intelligent distribution of security functionalities across network nodes. CISSAN is EU CELTIC-NEXT project (https://www.celticnext.eu/project-cissan/). In Finland CISSAN belongs to Bittium´s Seamless and Secure Connectivity program funded by Business Finland.

Main focus

The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) has fundamentally changed how different environments, such as homes, offices, factories, smart buildings, and smart grids, are used and operated. However, security is a major concern for IoT networks and environments, where the risks of physical device tempering, injection of malicious devices, and unpatched vulnerabilities are higher than in traditional networks. CISSAN proposes and implements algorithms for mitigating IoT security threats through collective decision-making and with a reduced impact on the limited resources of IoT devices. These algorithms will be based on research and innovation in optimizing the distribution of security capabilities and aggregating the intelligence in IoT network nodes. Three industrial use cases, which nowadays heavily rely on the use of IoT, will inform the project developments and will be used for validating and demonstrating the project results: (i) public transportation; (ii) smart energy grids; (iii) mining and tunneling operations.

Approach

CISSAN will research and implement algorithms for distributed security monitoring, attack detection and response in IoT networks. Such algorithms will combine machine learning-based methods, more traditional AI techniques (e.g., decision-making based on formal knowledge representation and expert systems, fuzzy logic-based approaches, or genetic algorithms), and attack-specific rules. Since increasing the level of autonomy in IoT network defence is one of the high goals of the project, we will propose mechanisms for collective decision-making by CISSAN “security agents”, which are essentially security functions placed to IoT network nodes. Blockchain-based consensus protocols are one possible type of such mechanisms to be considered in the project. To enable communication between the security agents, CISSAN will implement a light overlay networking solution. Also, methods and tools will be developed for verifying the quality of data sets used in the project for building machine learning models and supporting other data-driven technologies.

IoT devices are usually resource-constrained, and instrumenting each of them with the full set of security functions required for detecting and countering cyberattacks may not be an optimal strategy. Instead, we will propose network context-aware algorithms for distributing the security functions among the IoT devices, edge devices, and possibly cloud backends to achieve a suitable balance between the network resilience and the resource utilization.

The technical efforts in CISSAN will be accompanied by defining and investigating potential business models around the project results and their business impact analysis. Regulatory and compliance considerations will be taken into account, including the ENISA’s work on certification schemes.

Partners

AddSecure Smart Grids (SE), Affärsverken Karlskrona (SE), Arctoslabs AB (SE), Blekinge Tekniska Högskolan (SE), Blue Science Park (SE), Cibernos (ES), Clavister AB (SE), Councilbox (ES), Geodata Ziviltechnikergesellschaft mbH (AT), Mattersoft Ltd. (FI), Mint Security Ltd. (FI), Netox (FI), Nodeon Finland Oy (FI), Savantic (SE), ScopeSensor Ltd. (FI), Techinova AB (SE), University of Jyväskylä (FI), Wirepas Oy (FI)

Contact

Contact for the CISSAN project is [email protected]

Press Releases and News Related to the Program