The Cyber Defence Campus (CYD Campus) is a competence centre of the

Swiss Confederation Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerlan ...

for

information security Information security is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorized or inappropriate access to data ...

(cybersecurity). It is affiliated to the Federal Office of Defence Procurement,

armasuisse The Federal Office for Defence Procurement (Armasuisse) is a federal agency of the Swiss Confederation. It is the procurement organization for armaments of Switzerland and is affiliated with the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection ...

and thus to the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS). It pursues strategic objectives that are defined within the Cyber Defence Action Plan, the DDPS Cyber Strategy and the National Cyber Strategy (NCS). It is the link between the public administration, industry and academia in research, development and training for

cyber defence Proactive cyber defense means acting in anticipation to oppose an attack through cyber and cognitive domains. Proactive cyber defense can be understood as options between offensive and defensive measures. It includes interdicting, disrupting or d ...

. The aim of the CYD Campus is to identify developments in the cyber area and drive innovation in the field of cyber defence.

History

In 2017, Federal Councillor

Guy Parmelin Guy Bernard Parmelin (; born 9 November 1959) is a Swiss Federal Councillor and head of the Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research. A member of the Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC), he has been a member of the Federal Council si ...

issued a cyber defence action plan in response to a cyber attack on the federally owned defence company RUAG to improve Switzerland's defences against cyber threats. This Action Plan for Cyber Defence (APCD) also included the establishment of the CYD Campus with its mission to anticipate developments in

cyberspace Cyberspace is an interconnected digital environment. It is a type of virtual world popularized with the rise of the Internet. The term entered popular culture from science fiction and the arts but is now used by technology strategists, security ...

, monitor trends and develop the skills and technologies required for cyber defence. The CYD Campus was subsequently founded by armasuisse Science and Technology in January 2019.

Organisation and tasks

Based on the national cyber strategy, the CYD Campus performs four tasks to strengthen Switzerland's cyber defence: * Early detection of trends in the cyber area * Research and innovation of cyber technologies * Training of talents and cyber specialists * Searching for vulnerabilities

Collaboration network and locations

The CYD Campus maintains a collaboration network with over 60 public and private organisations. These include universities from Switzerland (e.g.

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

and EPFL) and abroad (e.g.

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

) as well as industrial partners (start-ups, SMEs and established companies). The CYD Campus is represented in three cities (

Thun Thun () is a List of towns in Switzerland, town and a Municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in the administrative district of Thun (administrative district), Thun in the Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Canton of Bern, Bern in Switzerland. ...

Zurich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

and

Lausanne Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...

) with its own collaboration spaces.

Strengthening cyber defence in Switzerland

The CYD Campus implements various measures to sensibilize the Swiss public to cyber issues and implement the tasks.

CYD Campus Conference

The CYD Campus aims to bring together business, industry, the armed forces and universities and organises an annual conference for this purpose. Experts from the field of cyber security present security and defence-related cyber topics.

Hackathons

The Cyber Defence Campus organises

hackathons A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of '' hacking'' and ''marathon'') is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 h ...

with the aim of promoting the exchange of knowledge in the cyber community. Students, IT experts and members of the

Swiss Armed Forces The Swiss Armed Forces (; ; ; ; ) are the military and security force of Switzerland, consisting of land and air service branches. Under the country's militia system, regular soldiers constitute a small part of the military and the rest are ...

have the opportunity to work on real-time projects and use software and data to identify potential vulnerabilities over the course of a week.

Cyber Startup Challenge

The CYD Campus monitors and anticipates cyber developments, responding to the increasing cyber risks and looking for forward-looking technologies as part of its Cyber Startup Challenge. The Cyber Defence Campus organises Cyber Startup Challenges with the aim of identifying innovative solutions in the field of cyber security and developing solutions for the Swiss Armed Forces with startups.

CYD Fellowships

The CYD Fellowship Programme is a talent programme in the field of cyber security research. The CYD Campus launched the Fellowship Programme in 2020 together with EPFL Lausanne. Master's and PhD students as well as postdocs have the opportunity to write a thesis on cyber topics with the support of experts from the CYD Campus and professors from Swiss universities.

References

External links

{{official website, https://www.ar.admin.ch/en/en-cyber-defence-campus Military of Switzerland Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sports